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Voyage - The Final Warning (Chapters 34-36 And Epilogues)

Ultimate Steve

By Ultimate Steve
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  • 4 weeks later...
Ultimate Steve

Ultimate Steve

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Interlude III - A Brief History of Galactus The Cow

The following is retelling of the first three and a half "Galactus The Cow" comic books I wrote several years ago, edited to be canon compliant. I liked the character enough that I brought him into Voyage, although the name is originally from an unrelated Minecraft Let's Play series.

Spoiler

"How much do you want to hear?"

"How much time do we have?"

"Hmm, good point. So there I was - Just an ordinary cow out on Planet Pock! Oh, to be ordinary again... On Planet Pock, with the wonderful green continents, blue riv-ceans, brown mountains, pink forests... That was centuries ago, I barely remember much of my life, only that I missed it... But then one day there was a giant meteor. Probably more like a moon, honestly."

"A moon just came out of nowhere?"

"Well probably not, but I'm not into astrology, how would I know?"

"Astrology? I think you mean - "

"Oh, right, Astral Projection. ANYWAY, I saw the meteor moon thing coming... I named it Ted. And then I realized that Ted wanted a hug, but unfortunately he's so big that I was like "Oh no, Ted is gonna kill us aaaaalllllll!" and ran to my shed to escape Ted."

"Why the shed?"

"Well, what instead?"

"So you tread ahead to the shed to escape Ted."

"Yes."

"Why the shed?"

"You see, I had this wonderful plan! I had TNT in my shed."

"Why?"

"Why should I know? Anyway, I quickly assembled a makeshift TNT powered rocket."

"In such a short time?"

"Well, it wasn't much to look at. I made a metal cylinder, stuffed it with TNT, slapped some random yellow triangles on as fins, borrowed a steering wheel, slapped a nose cone on, and tied a chair to it. But, before I could finish it, a spark from my lamp lit the fuse without me noticing."

"Random yellow triangles?" I asked.

"You're more concerned about him having random triangles than building a makeshift rocket in several minutes?"

"So anyway, I was tied to the rocket, and it took off as I was looking through my tool box. It yanked me up into the air rather violently, but that was for the best because Ted gave Planet Pock a hug right then. Everything went all explodey and when I looked back, Planet Pock was gone."

"I'm so sorry."

"I miss it sometimes, but I've had centuries to come to terms with that. Anyway, so I'm out in space, and - "

"How high was the gravity on planet Pock?"

"Oh, maybe a tad under a g."

"How could you have possibly reached space on board a rocket powered by TNT?"

"I dunno. All the scientists say it was impossible.  But they say a lot of things about me are impossible. Anyway, so I'm out in space, I'd just managed to climb in to my seat, when I see a crack, and the rocket straight up EXPLODES. So now I'm REALLY out in space, alone, and I bounce off of this random satellite - "

"Did Pock have a space program?"

"Nope, but I'm fairly sure I bounced off a satellite. And then, after that, I faceplanted into a moon."

"And survived?"

"Well I'm here, aren't I? Stop interrupting! To my left I see a crashed UFO, and then I fell into this hole and fell for five minutes... I land in a pile of cheese, and meet these green aliens who give me this translator!" Galactus showed us the translator around his neck. "Able to translate into any language. They seemed to know all about me already, and told me that in order to save my planet, I need to find the Magic Boulder."

"Oh yeah, I think Jeb told us about that briefly."

"But before they could tell me more, the aliens went to the bathroom to vomit. Apparently they are actually red, but turn green when they need to throw up."

"Freaky."

"That's exactly what I thought! So they say "We are the defenders of the cheese moon" or something and tell me that the Magic Boulder is a work of the ancients that allows the user to travel through time. Sort of."

"Wait, don't we have time travel technology already?"

"Well, yes, and no. Half of the people say "Hey we should use it" and the other people say "Hey we shouldn't" but the "Hey we shouldn't" people just use their time machines to undo everything that the "Hey we should" people do. Which isn't much, it takes exponentially more power to go back through time a ton, trips very far back would require far too much energy. ANYWAY, all that is moot because I would later find out that the Boulder's time travel technology is very, very limited, it's less "Time Travel" and more "Bring a destroyed planet back from the dead into the present" or something like that. The details are very, very sketchy."

"Huh."

"The boulder, however, was well hidden, they said. They tell me that on the planet below there is this pig named Phil the Pig who can help me. They also tell me to fear the Yhugoslavakianos."

"I didn't know the Yugoslavians had a space program."

"No, Yhugoslavakianos, not Yugoslavians. So they tell me I can use their escape cannon. To get into it, I had to use anti gravity, and then I got fired to the planet below."

"You survived a planet explosion, a rocket explosion, bouncing off a satellite at orbital speeds, crashing into a moon, falling into cheese, and launching from a cannon in the space of under an hour?"

"Closer to half an hour."

"How?"

"I HAVE NO IDEA!" he cackled. "So anyways - Sure you don't want any nachos? No? Ok. So anyways, I re entered the atmosphere and landed in a parking lot, next to a fast food restaurant. I'm kidnapped and taken to some sort of farm, where I coincidentally met Phil the Pig. What are the odds?"

"Probably not good."

"So I tell him I'm looking for the Magic Boulder, and he says that he had information but lost it on the planet Mycelium. So you know what we did?"

"What?"

"We built another rocket!"

"Was it with a more sensible fuel?"

"Nope, still TNT. But hey, at least we had a windshield this time! Phil had an Anti-Lab below the farm's barn, and we got to work on TNT 02."

"Anti-Lab?"

"It's like a lab but it sounds cooler! There were a number of upgrades over the last one. It was more structurally sound, had two integrated seats, we switched the fins from random yellow triangles to curved blue sheet metal spikes, and we painted flames on the front. Five zentongs later, we were ready."

"I have a question."

"How would we launch without being noticed?"

"No, that was not my question."

"Glad you asked, Phil pressed his volcano button."

"Is that a codename?"

"Yes, it's code for "That button that raises a giant fake volcano from the underground." Very convenient."

"How would that help?!?!?!?!?!?"

"Distraction!!! So we were about to launch, and then this giant several hundred foot tall green alien with eyestalks shows up, rips off a giant chunk of the giant fake volcano and shouts "OALBOALBOLABOLABOLABOLACHIA!" and starts towards the barn."

"Why was he there?"

"I have no idea! So we got in, lit the fuse, and launched! Control was a bit dicey at first, we blew up the barn and did a loop the loop, but flew right through the chunk of volcano in the alien's hand!"

"No!"

"Yes! I was very glad we added a windshield."

"You couldn't have made it far, TNT can't have a very high specific impulse at all!"

"Well we made it pretty far, and I'm glad we did. That was a GREEN alien, remember? Imagine the vomit!"

"So what happened after you crashed back down?"

"What do you mean? After we launched, we flew past this gas giant with an ice moon, but we were running low on TNT so we stopped at a gas station."

"There was a random gas station that sold TNT out in the middle of nowhere? You made it to another planet with TNT? AGAIN?"

"There were two gas stations, one was cheaper! So anyway, we got supplies, and they upgraded us to Premium TNT free of charge! We also got a GPS."

"They have GPS in space?"

"Galactic Positioning System. So then we flew for a bit, and ended up at Infinity City, a giant space city, where we stayed at a hotel. Then we went to Nelson's Military Surplus Store, he's a cool dude."

"Military? I thought nobody else was violent!"

"Hey, I know what I saw! They all think I'm crazy, but well... I mean I guess I'm pretty crazy... But I know what I saw, alright! So we refueled there, got some rocket launchers, and crossed the Infinity line!"

"What's that?"

"It's kinda like a wormhole, but more liney. But then, we were attacked by space pirates!"

"There are space pirates? Isn't the galaxy supposed to be peaceful?"

"Again, I know what I saw, I swear! Luckily, those rocket launchers came in handy. But then we noticed we had a stowaway, Franny the Frog!"

"So Galactus the Cow, Phil the Pig, and Franny the Frog now?"

"Yes."

"Those are all human animals."

"Well obviously not. Evolution often trends towards similar designs..."

"Intelligent frogs?"

"Yes! So she is like uber smart and fixes up the ship for us, and makes some improvements. I don't remember the specifics, but I think that she was able to get the specific impulse up to like 900 or something."

"For TNT? Impossible!"

"Oi, this was Premium TNT! So then we get to talking. Franny the Frog tells me that her homeworld was destroyed by those Yugo guys, and joins us on the quest to find the Magic boulder so we can restore both of our planets."

"This sounds like a comic book a middle schooler would write."

"So we get to Mycelium, and it's this giant planet with brown terrain, some blue oceans and rivers, a giant war-torn wasteland, and this GIGANTIC mushroom that leads up into space, with a city beneath it. The legend was that this mushroom was created by the Great Wizard Ladstini eons ago."

"...A war torn wasteland?"

"I know what I saw, I'll say it again!"

"So much war... So the humans... Aren't unique in their ways of violence?"

"I mean, they've found four others."

"But we're at several already!"

"I. Know. What. I. Saw. Anyway, major design flaw, TNT 02 has no landing gear. And we ran out of fuel. So we skid across the top of the mushroom for a few minutes, not slowing down much, before plummeting off the side into the war torn wasteland. We survived, but poor TNT 02 was wrecked... HOWEVER, we ended up crashing near the site of a buried relic. We dug for a bit, and we ended up finding this ancient golden mushroom with an inscription. It said that it was Ladstini's research on the Magic Boulder, but the actual stuff was untranslatable, it was such an old language! So we were going to find a translator."

"That's sensible."

"BUUUUT then one of those red aliens from the cheese moon from earlier shows up in a weird rocket and says "Hey we're actually the bad guys, give us the relic" and apparently Franny is actually their queen! She steals the relic, threatens us, and leaves with those guys, who actually turned out to be the Yugo guys. So now we're stranded in a war torn wasteland, with no TNT, no relic, and apparently the mushroom monsters come out at midnight. Then, this giant sphere with the words "Depth Sphere 3" or something shows up in the sky, no idea what happened to the first two."

"The Death Star?"

"Yes."

"What the hell is the Death Star doing in reality?"

"You know what the Death Star is?"

"Yeah, it's like the best known superweapon in all of human fiction."

"OH!!!! THIS IS BIG! So Franny's device also pulled from human fiction! And this was thousands of years ago… so… Future fiction??? Wait, I'm getting ahead of myself... So later we found out that Franny and the Yugos had come up with this device that could gather all of the greatest villains from fiction and history in one spot, in reality. There were hundreds, but there was this "Dark Invader" dude who built the Depth Spheres, and maybe a green clump of moss in a trash can, I don't remember."

"Darth Vader and Oscar the Grouch?"

"Prime Evil! And she gathered them all in an attempt to take over the universe!"

"Wait... Like The Species?"

"No, nothing like The Species. So they try to fire the Depth Sphere, but it doesn't work. Anyways, we're stuck on Mycelium, surrounded by junk, and then we see this volcano."

"Another volcano?"

"Yes. So, we are like "Hey we could use this as a cannon to get back to the city" and we build a spaceship cannon projectile out of old war machines, mainly a tank and a mecha, but then we find out that this volcano is actually extremely powerful, and it launches us SUUUPER far. Like the mushroom cloud from the volcano ends up bigger than the giant mushroom from the city. A lot of the lava reached escape velocity!"

"I'm pretty sure that's also impossible!"

"Well obviously not. But we were on a sub orbital trajectory So we waited until near apoapsis and fired shells out of the tank cannon to circularize our orbit."

"Well at least it's more sensible than TNT!"

"Meanwhile, Dark Invader is building more Depth Spheres in pocket dimensions but they keep failing, so Franny goes to Trash Moss for plan B. By this point, we found a space station. We met a guy who traded us the tank for a spaceship, and a promise that we restore three more worlds when we found the boulder. By complete coincidence, it was an extremely high tech, advanced TNT rocket, with seats just right for us, that looked the same as the other ones stylistically."

"This is an awful lot of coincidence."

"So anyway, Dark finally got the Depth Sphere working after like 80 thousand tries, and tires to destroy Mycelium, but the laser beam hits a giant mirror at a mirror shop, ricochets for a while, and destroys the Depth Sphere."

"And?"

"Well, you see... I don't know."

"You don't know?"

"I must have had some memories erased at some point... The next thing I remember, Phil is breaking me out of some place, and then it explodes and whatnot. He fills me in on what he remembers, basically, there was a lot of battles, lots of adventures, and when I got out of it we were on TNT 12. Franny's empire was crumbling, we retrieved the artefact, and apparently the translation said that Ladstini was somewhat fascinated with the boulder himself, apparently it was extremely, extremely old. It was a legend in his time! We had also found Phil's old notes, and a few other leads. The boulder, it seemed, had the power to restore planets at any phase of their life, or a mixed phase, but the planets had to be destroyed or disfigured. A curious being known as "The Sentinel" also supposedly watched over it. But really we weren't able to find out much more."

"No location hint?"

"Minor hints, but they were mostly speculation and led nowhere. Also, we never found Phil's planet again. We couldn't even find Mycelium again after a certain point. So Phil and I went on more adventures, trying to find the boulder... But after a certain point, well..."

"Well?"

"We gave up.  Phil left the crew somewhere around TNT 200 or so. Last I talked to him, he was extremely depressed. The man had lost everything. Many years later, after I had been unable to even locate Phil's star system, I found the Galactic Council. I told them all I knew, but they were far more excited about "Hey a new species! Let's make him a representative!" than finding the boulder. They all think I'm either crazy or a comedian putting on an act."

"So nobody believes you?"

"What part of the whole story I just told you sounds believable?"

"Good point... So wait. You found the council very late on? The Yugos weren't part of it? Nor was Franny?"

"Nope. We thought they could have been in the uncharted portions of the Galaxy. We still haven't charted everything, but we've checked most of it and haven't found much."

"Did you find anything at all?"

"Well, we found you lot. But no Pock. No Mycelium. No evil frogs. No Depth Spheres. No Phil. No Infinity Lines. Nothing. They still humor me, I guess, and at least act like they are seriously considering my stories... Do you believe me?"

"I... I don't know."

"I figured. But please remember... I know what I saw. I am sane. Maybe not perfectly sane. But sane. Alright?"

"I can believe that." Evelina nudged me and passed me her tablet.

 

==========

 

===>[+] Galactic Union of Planets Species Report 743

[+] Subject: Pockian Cow

[+] Subject: Galactus The Cow

[+] Author: Dr. Frimiltun.

[+] On First Contact: On (DATE) we came across Galactus The Cow adrift in space in a tiny, slender rocket known by Galactus as TNT 396. Despite no prior known contact, we were able to converse with him thanks to a translator on the subject's neck. First contact went very well, with responders describing Galactus as goofy and funny. The responders were initially extremely alarmed to see what appeared to be weapons on TNT 396, however, these were said to be for "asteroid defense" by the subject. Galactus was taken in for questioning and TNT 396 was taken in for inspection.

[+] On TNT 396: Rocket was approximately thirty meters long, three meters in diameter, with a dark red body with stripes, black fins, and a black nose cone with crimson flames. Galactus commented that he was going through a "Goth" phase when he painted the rocket. The rocket featured three seats, all open to space, rudimentary controls, and fairly ancient computer technology. The propulsion system was hybrid. Long distance travel was achieved via a form of anti-trilithium Alcubierre drive. Deep space steering was accomplished by sub-spacetime control fins using interactions with the Higgs field to directly steer. This is not a novel concept, but has not been developed in Union space due to lack of perceived need. Medium range travel was accomplished via a compact fusion reaction engine (which also provided spacecraft power) fueled by any available liquid. Short range travel was achieved using stick-shaped explosive devices. RCS capability was given by thrusters using a sticky, yellow, surprisingly tasty goop known by Galactus as "Nacho Cheese."

[+] On Galactus The Cow: Galactus described a long journey that had taken him from his destroyed homeworld, Planet Pock, through many inhabited worlds, memory wipes, wars, and betrayals to The Union. We speculate that such a collection of civilizations may remain undiscovered in the Uncharted Arm of the galaxy. (ADDENDUM (DATE): Further exploration has proved that this is almost certainly not the case) For the full account of Galactus' story, please refer to Galactic Union of Planets Species Report 734.

[+] On Truth: Galactus has described several actions along his adventure that are nearly or completely physically impossible. These include:

///[+] Launching a makeshift TNT powered rocket on an interplanetary journey

///[+] Surviving several unsurvivable falls

///[+] Launching a second makeshift TNT powered rocket on an interstellar journey

///[+] Experiencing several one in a billion coincidences which conveniently advance his story

///[+] Encountering several violent spacefaring species

///[+] Surviving in a vacuum indefinitely

///[+] Surviving being shot out of a volcano powerful enough to change a planet's orbit

///[+] For the full list please refer to Galactic Union of Planets Species Report 735.

[+] As such, most experts have concluded that Galactus' story is almost certainly a partial or complete fabrication, although such a fabrication is likely not on purpose.

[+] On Galactus' motivations: Galactus' homeworld, Planet Pock, was allegedly destroyed by an asteroid or moon impact. Galactus seeks the mythical object "The Magic Boulder," an ancient artefact that supposedly has the ability to restore planets via travelling through time. His adventure has been almost entirely focused on locating this boulder.

[+] On Evidence: No evidence of most aspects of Galactus' story have ever been found. There are no star systems in the Galaxy identical to the one supposedly housing Planet Pock. No evidence of the Magic Boulder's existence has ever surfaced. No evidence of the described series of advanced civilizations has ever surfaced, despite years (ADDENDUM (DATE): Centuries) of searching. Several logical inconsistencies have also been found in his accounts.

[+] On Evidence II: However, some evidence exists. The existence of Galactus The Cow himself proves that his species exists/existed and that Planet Pock likely is/was a real place. The translator around Galactus' neck is extremely advanced, many times more advanced than our best translator technologies, and is currently impossible to replicate with known manufacturing techniques. If Galactus is to be believed about the state of Planet Pock's technological progression, they did not have the technology to construct this device. This, and the existence of the advanced systems on board TNT 396, is strong evidence for the existence of at least one additional spacefaring civilization. Therefore, with the evidence that does exist, it is impossible to completely refute Galactus' claims.

[+] On Theories: The leading theory is that Planet Pock once did exist, and was destroyed, leaving Galactus as one of the last, or the last survivor, eventually rescued by an advanced civilization. Emotionally distraught from the destruction of his homeworld, and aided by potential memory wipes or possible memory inhibiting drugs, potentially related to hospitalization, he made up an adventure, a fantastical adventure, in which he was the hero, determined to save his people. He invented the Magic Boulder and Phil and the Yugos and most of his journey in order to cope with loss and give him hope. Galactus believed this adventure was real, and acted as such, exploring in whatever ship he could find in a vain attempt to locate the supposed Magic Boulder.

[+] On Anomalies: It is impossible to tell without a full dissection, something not possible until after Galactus' death (and we made him functionally immortal), but there is a minority belief within the scientific community that Galactus The Cow may be a quantum linked being, with power over a small part of reality, being able to alter the laws of physics within reason unless measured. This seems to roughly mirror the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. The more precisely the anomalous effects are observed, if they exist at all, the less powerful they are, usually down to the point where they are undetectable. This would explain how he can survive long falls and how he can breathe in a vacuum, his amazing luck, and the unreasonably high effectiveness of any ship he pilots. However, due to the nature of these anomalies, these effects can never be directly measured. (ADDENDUM (DATE): Further minor inconclusive evidence of quantum linking has been observed in individuals who have survived the use of high numbers (over 30) of IC Emergency Translocation Devices (Commonly referred to as Illasticonian Crystals). However, Galactus claims to have never seen or heard of this technology or anything like it.)

[+] On The Origin of Galactus The Cow: It is speculated that Galactus The Cow may have originated from (REDACTED). However this is impossible as neither TNT 396 nor any of the TNT series rockets that Galactus recalls have the technology necessary to (REDACTED).

[+] In Conclusion, much of what Galactus says is demonstrably false. What little grains of half-truths exist hint towards at least one possible additional unconfirmed civilization, however no additional evidence supporting any of his claims has been found. While he may possibly have severe trauma and brain damage, his intentions are peaceful, therefore I recommend that his status as a representative be maintained.

(ADDENDUM (DATE): Representative Jebediah has taken a great interest in Representative Galactus. The two have become allies. Perhaps they have been able to discuss their similar experiences, namely the horrifying sight of an inhabited planet exploding. It is great that Galactus is fitting in.

 

==========

 

"So... Galactus is an SCP?" I whispered to Evelina.

"Maybe... But as much as I want to believe him... I don't think I do."

"The story just seems too fantastical... If there was an evil frog with thousands of Death Stars, and dozens more civilizations, I think the Union would know about it. And he couldn't have come from very far away, not with the tech in his ship!"

"Yeah... I wonder... Will we ever know the truth..."

"Alright you two," Galactus announced. "We're just about here. I'll try to sneak you in... I can't promise anything after that. If the meeting goes well, I might be able to evac you... But you're probably on your own, just to warn you. Good luck, main characters."

"Thank you, Galactus, it is an honor."

"Likewise."

"Behold, the Galactic Council Chamber!"

PeATC0o.png

"Wow... That's kinda... Underwhelming." I observed. And it was true... Compared to the megastructures on Kerbin, Illasticonian cityscapes, Merosian space station, and beautiful Jslanian mountains, this station seemed to look dated, and like it tried to appear grand but fell a bit short.

"You expected more sci fi? Sorry, kids! This thing was built millennia ago, at the conclusion of the Great Interstellar War, it's ancient history. This is pretty much the oldest spacefaring vessel still in service."

"...They kept a spaceship running, above a black hole, for thousands of years?!?"

"And they think I'm crazy! You know, it might even be older than human civilization, I'll have to check... It was built back when we didn't know what we were doing, and retrofitted to keep up with modern tech. Gotta say though, it's quite nice having a cool ancient traditional meeting site like this. There's all that poetic stuff about having utter destruction above and below, showing the fragility of life and how it must be protected and blah blah blah... But really I think they just wanted an excuse to make a cool space station."

"It's so... Dark."

"Well, it is a black hole, after all! Honestly, it's a miracle the darned thing hasn't fallen in yet."

"Where are all the ships?"

"Oh, they are there."

"I don't see any."

"Well they are probably too small to see. Except that flagship... That's arriving soonish I think."

"Wait. It's hard to get a sense of scale. Just how big is this thing, exactly?"

"Oh, about seven kilometers." I blinked in surprise.

"That seems excessive to carry under a hundred council members!" Evelina observed.

"Well, when it was built, we had exactly two data points for the size of intelligent life... Imagine how awkward it would be if they found giants next and built the station too small! Everything in there is overbuilt, to accommodate all manner of species. And all that tech in the back, we can't easily replace it, so we're stuck with the non-miniaturized versions. It doesn't take three kilometers worth of stuff to sustain orbit around a black hole any more, but it did back then."

"What exactly is that stuff?"

"Oh, an engine, a power collection device, a whole smattering of gadgets that allows us to orbit FTL and not have time go all wonky, devices that allow nearby ships to do the same, life support systems, radiators... But anyway, the details can wait. We're going in. Those handles on the side are the docking arrays, and the council chamber itself is inside a smaller sphere inside that larger sphere up front. I have absolutely no idea what you plan on doing, but I'm going to dock near the front end on the right hand side. From there I can get you into the air vents, I'm uploading the files to your tablets. Just make sure to use the right ones, this one species breathes sulfuric acid or something like that. Don't want to go in there! I'll proceed to the meeting. You, well... What exactly do you have planned anyway? No, wait, I shouldn't know... The fewer people who do, the better."

"Right." I looked at Evelina, and she looked back at me. Both of our faces betrayed the fact that neither of us had a plan beyond "show up and hope an opportunity presents itself to mess up The Species' plans because we might be important enough that they are shaping our paths for their own benefit." We have gotten this far, but our luck has to run out eventually...

"Alright then. Here goes nothing," Evelina said nervously as she grabbed my hand.

"Geronimo."

 

==========

 

"Everything is in position," reported Z.

"Affirmative," responded Y.

 

 

 

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Kerbalstar

Kerbalstar

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Awesome interlude @Ultimate Steve! I appreciate the meta jab “this sounds like a comic book a middle schooler would write”. Also, with all these... coincidences, I have two theories about Galactus (besides that he’s a character from an old comic that got ported over here, of course). A, he’s actually sent by the Species, but doesn’t know it. Why, that’s hard to say, but perhaps even just to get Ethan and Evelina there and distract them through the flight, or B, he’s actually from another galaxy or something, which would explain why the Union hasn’t found out anything about him. Anyway, great interlude and I look forward to the next chapter!

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Ultimate Steve

Ultimate Steve

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Ultimate Steve - On K Drives (not part of the story, just a lore note)

Spoiler

It's no secret that very few things in the story actually make sense if you look at them closely for any amount of time. This is generally worse towards the beginning of the story because I know better now. One of the biggest things I'd change if I ever get around to a second draft (which requires finishing the story lol) is making the technology make more sense.

One thing I've been working on recently is making K-drives, which I've stated to be "not infinite energy machines" into something that's not actually an infinite energy machine, despite being an in-universe analogue to a glitch that is literally an infinite energy machine and behaving exactly like an infinite energy machine. My very bad explanation from a few years ago doesn't really hold together much, so here's my attempt at an explanation that makes sense.

The basic idea is that K-drives are just really good batteries combined with a way to convert potential energy directly to kinetic energy (and in later versions, back again at high efficiency). This is done against a reference "background field" so there is a zero energy level as to prevent infinite energy being extractable. This combined with a few other technologies allows for an effective FTL drive.

The following explanation kinda makes sense with what is already written, but not completely, and will require some changes in the second draft (if it ever exists).

Essentially, K-drives are the brute-force method of FTL. They rely on three or four key technologies. The first is essentially a capacitor/battery capable of safely containing enormous amounts of energy. The second is a device that will allow efficient conversion between this stored energy and kinetic energy (in both directions) via interactions with an unnamed, unmoving, universal background field. The third is an admittedly technobabble set of "Muon beds" or "Tachyon beds" or both (I forget which one I've used, I probably used both) that allows for either (I haven't decided yet) shifting local lightspeed forwards or backwards so that you can still accelerate as if you were stationary, so you can accelerate efficiently and surpass C without actually surpassing C, OR doing something similar but only around C, and once you are past C you can accelerate as normal (in essence, bringing you over the light speed "wall" or asymptote). The fourth technology is an inertial dampener of sorts which eliminates the local effects of acceleration. However, these are quickly replaced following the development of field-thrust type K drives.

In addition, there's also something that allows them to avoid time dilation and/or possible time travel when exceeding light speed, but that is something nearly every sci-fi universe has to have so I won't bother trying to technobabble my way out of it, as its been done so much that people rarely bother explaining it any more.

 

A history/explanation of K-drives:

 

The Kerbals discover a new extremely rare material, called K-material (I don't have a name yet, maybe Krakenium?), somewhat early on in their space exploration pursuits. It is discovered to be a very awesome battery (Early on in the story I mention humans somehow having the best battery tech but that's stupid, forget I said that, I wanted to take it out long before I thought of this). So awesome, in fact, that it could safely store essentially but not quite infinite amounts of energy. Most of it is found naturally discharged, but some of it contains a huge amount of energy (energized K material). It is used as a general power source or very good batteries early on, in many applications. However, eventually the Kerbals discover a way to interact with a background field of sorts that permeates throughout all known space. This technology is extremely expensive. By pushing off this background field (essentially a road of sorts) they can convert stored energy into kinetic energy fairly easily (acting like a tire on the road). However it needs a lot of energy. Generators are too big/heavy. The only known stuff capable of containing this energy in a compact space is K-material (Antimatter could also be used, but this was before widespread use of antimatter as a storage medium). Because of this, and the whims of the scientist who invented it, the propulsion tech took on the name of the battery and not the engine. It can be charged up using high-energy ground based power sources and then be launched on a spacecraft.

In addition, it's worth noting that the whole galaxy is moving relative to the background field, so if you tapped the brakes, per se, you would appear to accelerate away from the planet, but only until you reached zero velocity relative to the field. So not an infinite energy machine, but it could be essentially used as a near infinite energy machine if you could make one big enough to, say, convert the kinetic energy of planets into usable energy. However, that comes way later and isn't very practical. The first Proto-K Drives just braked and were shot out of the solar system, but had to deal with tons of waste heat from the braking.

Early K-drives are first tested on probes, and can only accelerate at a tiny amount, and are very jittery. This jitter is because part of the engine runs on keeping two devices (referred to as plates) a set distance from each other, the distance correlates to acceleration. Acceleration increases exponentially the closer the plates are together, meaning it is very distance sensitive, causing vibrations with the slightest distance change. Later tech will improve this vibration. This subset of K-drive tech is known as a "Point thrust" K-drive because the thrust is produced essentially at a single point, where the thrust is then transferred to the rest of the craft.

Eventually, the tech gets to a point where enough thrust is produced to essentially make torch ships (capable of a sustained 1g or more) and those ships are used for interplanetary transport (although a lot of it is still done using existing tech, which is probably some variant of nuclear fusion but I haven't detailed their exact history so I don't know exactly). The trip isn't exactly comfy, though, with that vibration. At this point, K-drive tech isn't seen as FTL-viable, it is basically just a really good "conventional" propulsion system. If you managed to pack enough energy into it to get close to light speed, you would of course, be stopped long before light speed due to diminishing returns.

As K-drive tech got better and better, acceleration increased too, and the only limit was how much the Kerbals could sustain. This limitation was lifted when basic inertial dampeners were invented, which could be powered by the conveniently located uber-battery, allowing the craft to accelerate very quickly without negative effects on the payload, although the vibrations were still felt.

Of course, an essentially magic battery would have epic uses commercially, if not for the fact that, due to its rarity, it was incredibly expensive. This limited development into use of K tech outside of space travel significantly.

At this point, K tech was starting to get so good that another problem started to emerge. The Kerbals were having a lot of problems generating the power necessary to power all of these K-drives. At this point, when slowing down relative to the background field, all that energy was simply dispersed as waste heat, and the ships ran out of fuel eventually. This energy requirement may be behind the Kerbals' construction of that giant solar power system. This all stopped with the development of "closed loop" K-drive technology. Previous K-drives were "open loop." Closed loop K-drives could recapture energy from the field when slowing down instead of having it all go to waste. Initially the efficiencies were low, but over time it went up to some arbitrary very-close-to 100% value. If we go back to our "wheel and road" metaphor, this can be thought of as regenerative braking.

This solved the energy problem for the time being. All the Kerbals had to do was charge up K-material, and then it could essentially last forever in a spacecraft, needing only occasional recharging due to imperfect conversion or ship power requirements that were not directly related to propulsion. Spacecraft still had a "max speed" where the batteries got empty, but this wasn't an issue, as with current battery levels that speed could approach the speed of light.

However, now kinetic energy could be transformed into usable energy very easily. This prompted the development of very large versions of K-tech, designed to capture energy from the kinetic energy of large asteroids and small moons (maybe planets as well).

At this point, a problem started to emerge. Thrust is determined by the distance between two plates. If they got too close and too much energy was absorbed or discharged at once, the K-drive would simply burn itself out and become unusable. However, as K-drives were becoming more robust to withstand this energy output, and the plates got closer and closer together to extract energy on planetary scales, weird things started happening. It wasn't practical to contact the "background field" on a large surface area, and was usually unnecessary, so it was done on a small surface area. Unfortunately, it was discovered that above a certain energy-per-second-per-area value, if the K-drive was strong enough, it would permanently rip the background field causing all sorts of side effects, and of course, leading to no thrust. However, this phenomenon is localized, and because the galaxy is moving, the tears fly away quickly and are easily trackable and avoidable. Increasing K-drive surface area on the background field side was never really solved, so extracting energy from planets couldn't be done quickly. This also limited the size and acceleration of K-drive ships, although with gradual tech development this limit was expanded and didn't really come into play much.

After this point K-drives were always made at least slightly weaker than the background field on purpose so they would always fail before the field failed.

Now, the breakthrough that allowed FTL travel, Muon beds and/or Tachyon beds. The explanation for those is far up there, I don't have much more to say on that. Basically they ensure that you avoid the lightspeed asymptote and can keep accelerating like no speed limit exists. After some experiments (and of course something to avoid possible time dilation/travel), the first FTL flight is undertaken, and Kerbalkind begins branching out to nearby stars. The first K-drive ship Jebediah uses around Pol is one of these early FTL-ships (although it has likely been upgraded over time, why else would it have a cloning bay and that high acceleration).

However, there were two new problems that emerged in that early interstellar era.

1. If you want to get further than the nearest stars in any reasonable amount of time, you need a LOT of energy. To get to other stars in a reasonable time you need to travel many times the speed of light, which requires many times the power of a fleet that can just go at twice the speed of light or so.

2. Kerbalkind could not produce enough energy to fuel more than a few ultra-high speed K-drive ships a year.

1 and 2 wouldn't be a big problem if the "energized" K-material mentioned earlier didn't exist. However, most of Kerbalkind's supply had been used up by that point in domestic and scientific applications. No problem, just explore and find a bunch of the pre-energized stuff!

3. Energized K-material, and K-material in general, is extremely rare in the universe. The relatively high concentrations in the Kerbol system were just flukes.

This was a big problem, as now the total energy stored by the Kerbals (plus the extra generated each year) had to be split between a bunch of K-drive projects (and also running the planets). Making the ships as light as possible was also a priority, as that would reduce the energy required to go fast. It was a tradeoff between fleet tonnage and ship speed. Eventually, more energized K material was found outside the Kerbol system, but this was rare. Exploration begins to find more energized K material and extraterrestrial intelligence.

Sometime into this exploration era, the field-thrust K-drive is invented. While they could not increase the area of contact on the "background" side, they did find a way to increase the area uniformly on the "real" side. They found out how to have the engines, instead of producing a tiny point-thrust, to produce a field thrust, a bubble of acceleration. Every atom in the bubble is evenly accelerated, which essentially (finally!) solves the vibration issue, also making inertial dampeners obsolete, usually only used as a backup system.

Kerbalkind's biggest goal at this point was to find life outside the Kerbol system. The ISS Legacy II comes in here (the second K-drive ship in the story, the one that fell into Jool). Several life-seeking ships were built, taking up the majority of the energy allotment. After a long time searching, they eventually found Meros (the explosion of which I do need a better explanation for) but we all know what happened there.

After this time, a very experimental new technology emerges, "Field Vector Thrust" K-drives. Instead of the thrust direction being fixed, like a non-gimballed rocket engine, the acceleration direction can be altered without turning a ship. It isn't usually amazingly useful, but can be in some scenarios. The number one priority is studying how it works to see if it can also be done on the "background" side. This never happens, or at least not for a long time, though because of what happens next.

However, around this time, the Kerbals are found by the Galactic Union, and they are integrated. The Union are shocked that they didn't find them earlier on. Many species are found right after their first FTL trip. The reason this happened is because K-drives don't emit highly visible signatures like most other forms of FTL do, hence why they are used to try to evade The Species.

At this point, the Kerbals learn how to build more elegant, energy efficient FTL engines using different tech developed by The Union. Almost all development on K-drives stops immediately because they are far more expensive. However, the tech is studied by the Union because it is actually far more advanced than the Union's own K-drive technology, because it's only practical to develop on planets that have K-material accessible on, which are very rare. Existing K-ships, however, even old ones, benefit massively from Union tech because now, even more energy is accessible. Acceleration remains the same, but top speed increases because the amount of energy in the batteries was not limited by battery capacity but by the amount of available energy.

Due to the rarity and expense of K-material,  K-drive technology became obsolete (but many existing ships continued operating because most of the cost is up front and not in upkeep), and existing K-material is used occasionally as batteries due to its near infinite storage potential. At least in the Kerbin system, Antimatter becomes much cheaper (and a way is found to safely store it) and it becomes the preferred way to store large amounts of energy.

 

 

The only problem I can currently foresee with this explanation is that at some point, someone would have had a very high chance of accidentally running into Kerbin at several times the speed of light, causing an apocalypse, especially with the Kerbals' attitude towards danger. Enormous safeguards or enormous luck is needed for this to work. However I think this explanation is much better than the ideas I had before.

 

Again this explanation may not be fully compatible with the existing story, but if I ever get onto a second draft, some explanation, likely similar to this one, will be thought up and adhered to.

 

 

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Ultimate Steve

Ultimate Steve

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On 11/3/2020 at 5:51 AM, Ultimate Steve said:

Don't you love it when life gets in the way and motivation drops out and you drop a project for nearly a year?

Yeah, me neither.

Me neither, past me.

Chapter 30 - Survivor's Guilt

Spoiler

Jebediah Kerman breathed a sigh of relief as Galactus The Cow entered the council chamber. Now, all of the remaining representatives were here. The Council Chamber had been prepared, and evacuation procedures were fully in place. He himself had three evacuation craft positioned, and a large collection of emergency Illasticonian crystals - just in case. It was likely futile, as most of the range covered by said crystals now fell deep inside Species territory, but it was at least something.

Three minutes remained until the time set out by The Species. The nervousness of the council was so strong, you could smell it, both metaphorically and literally - The Drikans expressed emotion with scent. However, the particular scent that signaled surprise was very, very lethal to the Zicra, so they both relied on force fields to keep their atmospheres separate.

Meanwhile, a few hundred meters away, Ethan and Evelina were traversing through a massive oxygen duct, which was, stupidly, right next to all of the other breathable gas ducts, and was nearly indistinguishable from those not breathable to Humans. Fortunately, oxygen was the most common breathing gas, so it was the largest pipe.

Inside the pipe was an anti gravity field. “How are we supposed to traverse through this?” asked Ethan. “No ladder, or anything…”

Evelina had found a box made of a material similar to cardboard, sliced it up, and quickly fashioned it into two sail like devices. “The air current faces towards the council chamber, according to the cartoonish map Galactus drew for us… We can probably use these to catch the wind and steer.”

“What would I do without you,” Ethan said as he accepted one of the sails.

“Here goes nothing,” said Evelina as she jumped headfirst into the air duct. “WOOOOAH, that’s…”

Ethan jumped in as well. Instantly his senses were heightened. He felt more awake then ever. However, he had jumped too hard and slammed into the back wall. “OW!”

“I think this must be basically 100 percent oxygen,” said Evelina.

“Probably. They likely want it as pure as possible, as any impurities are probably lethal to at least one species… Hey hold on a second… This isn’t going to be like the movies where they have a huge giant choppy fan at the end of this, right?”

The duo made their way through the oxygen shaft rapidly, passing several vents. Fortunately, Galactus’s map proved accurate, and they chose the correct vents, eventually finding themselves directly beneath the council chamber room. Much to the relief of Ethan, there was no spinny death fan.

========== Star Ethan

Through an oxygen vent, Evelina and I could see the council chamber - and what a marvelous council chamber it was. Four tiers of 25 seats each, separated by glass walls and force fields to keep the atmospheres separate, each with their own pressurized walkway. These four tiers rotated at various rates to simulate various levels of gravity, and were extravagantly decorated. There were seats of every shape and size, with people of every shape, size, and color. There were at least two liquid-borne species, four with wings, and one that appeared to be a traditional “Rock Monster.” Only about half of the seats were full… Wait… No… Where was the Jslan representative?!?!?!?

Phew, fortunately, far away in the corner, was a Jslan. All hope must not be lost for their planet yet.

From this angle, only the corner of the main stage could be made out. Suddenly, however, there was a green and black flash of light (how do you even make black light?) as the representative from The Species teleported in, just beyond our field of view. I opened my mouth to gasp, but Evelina quickly covered my mouth.

“I see you have provided a chair,” boomed the strange entity.

“It was the least we could do,” replied one representative.

“Such a shameful waste of energy. All the hours put into the craftsmanship of this chair, with materials sourced from no less than eight planets and moons, transported across thousands of light years. That energy could be put to much better use, don’t you think?”

“Apologies, but - “

“Brought to a station that is the definition of pointless extravagance. The energy you have needlessly burned to keep this station hovering in this dangerous, hard to get to spot is estimated to be enough to power our entire collective in equilibrium for years and years.”

“If you would prefer a hammock, we can do that too.”

“SILENCE! You will, in time learn to love the path we have been taken, and after that, you too shall cast aside even love as little more than a pointless waste of energy. Now, who of you will follow me in our mission to make the most of what little the universe has given us?” There was a pause. “None. Not one. A shame. Anyway, we shall proceed… I shall present the surrender offer planet by planet, all conditions. All who refuse will fall, like the other dozens in your galaxy who already have. And, all who accept will be treated according to those conditions.”

“How do we know you will keep your word?” Asked a plant-like representative.

“That is irrelevant, for I already know your answers in advance. For the Trek’ivik representative, your last offer of surrender is as follows…”

What followed was fifteen minutes of absurd, seemingly arbitrary terms of surrender punctuated only by the occasional collective gasps of the council. This was for one representative! Such terms included slavery, and, among other things, the relocation of a mountain, and that the planet would be gradually terraformed into an unlivable world.

The next representative was presented with another ten minutes of similar demands, this time including the construction of a device that would turn their planet into a star.

Sensing that this was going to take forever, and with no option to heroically step in and save the day, Evelina and I decided to access the main bridge, which was only a short ways away. However, due to our sudden and unexpected entry into a gravity field, we crashed through a vent and landed smack dab in the middle of four very surprised aliens.

“You! What are you doing here?” asked one of them, who appeared to be manning a complicated control panel.

“Uhhh…” I said. “Well, what are you doing here? All of you! You’re wanted on the ship immediately! The message must not have gone through!”

“Ah, I thought they might need us… Lad, you have the ship, alright?” The remark was directed towards a very, very old man, who looked more than half asleep, in a uniform that looked almost as old. This “Lad” let out a grunt and barely moved. “Right. Apologies for being late.” Three of the four aliens left the room.

At this point I let myself look around a bit. The bridge had massive windows, which showed the swirling disc above and the gaping void of the black hole just barely below. There were a few main screens, most of which were playing a live feed of the council meeting. There were also a dozen or so stations, with thousands of switches, knobs, levers, and buttons. In the middle of it all was a large chair, which held “Lad.”

“Alpha blue turkey on the halm brigade,” he said.

“What?” I asked.

“Well don’t just stand there, get back to your posts! And send Laurfel to clean up that mess you made with the ceiling!”

“Yes sir,” I said as I dragged Evelina over to the nearest seat. “I think he is cuckoo,” I whispered.

“Hard a starboard, yeehaw and slime torr be.”

“Definitely,” Evelina whispered back.

“Wait, hold on, this appears to be the controls for the entire engine section,” I noted.

“And it’s all intuitive.”

“Makes sense, I guess, you would want to have controls as standardized as possible in a galaxy of over 80 species.”

Evelina began looking over the buttons, whispering out loud.

“Arrgohh, do not press that button!” shouted Lad, as he moved out of his seat for the first time.

“Roger, I was just looking at it,” replied Evelina.

“You’ve been at this post for seven years, you should know that that button will shut off the main gravimetric repulsors, and send this whole station hurtling into the heart of the galaxy!”

“It has like ten different safety locks, relax,” replied Evelina as she backed far away from the button. Lad slumped back deep into his chair and began muttering about “Shalmin road gorps” and “Retro Yeld Shields.”

“I stand corrected,” Evelina whispered, “None of those are locks… Just like seals and stuff. Someone could just come in here and destroy the station with one press of the button.” I looked around at the other buttons, many of which had similar functions and similar levels of security.

“Typical Union… Everything here is idiot proof, but nothing is malice proof.” I turned my attention back to the main screen.

“And now, the surrender terms for Jslan,” boomed the Species member, who we could now see clearly.

“Ugh, those tentacles,” I muttered.

“What tentacles? All I see is a sleazy lawyer,” replied Evelina.

“Hmm. Must look different to everyone. Weird.”

“You could at least have the decency to use the planet’s full name,” remarked the Jslan representative.

“Every word counts. Time is short. Energy is finite. There are just three terms for you. One, the planet will become an industrial powerhouse and mine its core to depletion. Two, the particle accelerator will be broken down for scrap. Three, all Jslans will submit to disintegration after the last chunk of iron is mined from the planet’s core.”

“Millions of Jslans spent their whole lives on that accelerator.”

“How inefficient.”

“Look, we can still work out a peaceful export deal. No effort on your part, we can get you all the resources you need, complete peace, beautiful views - ”

“Beauty is meaningless. Perhaps you would rather us move in with those scouts you spotted earlier? Blow up more than just that moon?”

“Sir, Esteemed Majesty of The Species,” began one representative.

“Your titles are meaningless.”

“Can you not see you are being unreasonable?”

“I am afraid it is you who are being unreasonable. Irresponsible. Wasteful. Destructive. And… Stubborn. Do you not see how futile it is to respond to our superior force? The majority of you have never even fought a war. We could give you a chance to save your homeworlds, and you would not have the might to seize it.”

“”Could” does not matter. “Will” does,” announced representative Xanth. Instantly, a giant purple ball materialized in front of the representative from The Species. Everyone gasped.

Except for “Lad.” He just said “Hey, I used to have one of those. Olives. O-Lives. Humans have cool food. Nice shades of purple.”

“This, Representatives of the Galactic Union, is an exercise in futility. This is the only existing key to an Alchrosite Quantized Distortion Barrier. This technology is billions of years ahead of your best efforts. Even with the entire might of the entire Species, it will likely take us another 23.573 million years to find a way to break through the barrier without this key - Obviously not worth it for the resources of a single planet. Check for yourselves… This barrier currently surrounds Jslan. Destroy the key, and Jslan can live in peace until they inevitably run out of resources and perish.”

Upon hearing this, and after confirmation from a communications device, the Jslan, in a rare fit of desperation, lunged towards the key, but was repelled back with a force so great, that they were thrust straight through a glass panel and force field separating the oxygen filled chamber from the ammonia filled seat of another representative. Both were in need of severe medical attention.

“And for all of your stubbornness, you are too scared to help.” The Species member manipulated the key. “It now surrounds Vya.” The Mandaluvian Representative sprung out of his seat in a fit of rage, drew two hidden laser blasters and charged the key. He was struck down by a bolt of energy after only three harmless shots.

“Dafagn, weapons are not allowed in the council chamber!” shouted one representative.

“You all disobeyed too!” Dafagn screamed in agony.

“How about Quiiiiznuvia?” That world’s representative detonated several bombs, causing many representatives to cower in fear, to similar effect. A few ran for the exit.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you. One step outside of this room and your planet dies.”

“Ethan...” She whispered.

“We are screwed,” I responded.

“We just have to destroy the key, right?”

“We? How?”

“The button is right there, dummy.”

“And next up, the planet sZardoXe.” This time, a massive explosion rattled through the ship, shaking even the control room.

“That seems a bit… Wrong, though… Destroying all galactic authority to save one planet,” I responded. “Better than nothing, but, like… Well...:”

“We would die?”

“Yeah, but they would too.” Another explosion rocked the ship as another representative attempted to destroy the key to his world. Alarms started blaring all over the bridge. “FIRE. FIRE. EVACUATE THE COUNCIL CHAMBER.”

“They already are dying, and if they aren’t, they will be soon,” she responded.

“Well, to be fair, they all have clones, we all have clones… Could we, like, rig it to self destruct in a certain amount of time?” I asked.

“I mean, if we had enough time, but they are through like 10 planets already, out of fifty, and - “

“Hey, you two,” said Lad. “You have the bridge. I’m going to go do something about that infernal noise.” Lad’s chair began to levitate and he floated out of the room.

“Good, he’s gone,” she said as another planet’s name was called.

“Evelina, you know I’m never going to be able to press that button.”

“And you think I’ll be able to? For a random planet we know nothing about?” Despite her tone, she started undoing the several latches and covers on the button.

“A pitiful attempt. You have only succeeded in the slaughter of your own leaders,” boomed The Species Representative. “And now, for planet Aelfirn, you will slaughter more!” Another alien, wielding odd swords, attacked the key.

“You’re right, this is silly. Do you see anything in there that we can use to blow him up with?

“It’s all bolted down,” I said. “Wait, hold on.”

“What?” A sudden realization dawned on me.

“It’s a trap, isn’t it.” Evelina’s eyes widened.

“Oh, you’re right, aren’t you…”

“Those surrender terms are absurd. That can’t possibly be the most energy efficient way to use our planets… They are just stalling them, waiting for us to decapitate the galactic government and wipe out all resistance… We just waltzed right in here to the sight of a button that does exactly what we - no, they - want! Evelina, we need to get out of here! Away from the button! Now!” We both took several steps back.

“Well, we should probably put the cover back on the button first,” Evelina said.

“Swords, how quaint,” said The Species Entity. “You all cower in fear, refusing to help, say it is pointless, and without fault, when your planet is up, throw everything you have at it, killing your own in the process. So selfish. I will show you a universe without selfishness. Now, will the Representative of Ihm succumb to selfishness as well?”

At that moment, Lad re-entered the room on his hover-chair.

“Darned Garvi-brashters… Oh, I forgot, if you see Galactus, tell him this is from me.” He tossed an envelope towards us… I reached out to catch it, but it missed horribly. I watched as it tumbled through the air past Evelina, who also failed to catch it.

We both looked on in horror as time seemed to slow to a crawl. “NOOOOOOO!” We both shouted. The envelope spun, circled, and hesitated slightly, before diving down, straight for the button.

It hit dead center.

I grabbed Evelina’s hand and squeezed my eyes shut, but nothing happened. A few seconds later, I opened my eyes. A short sentence had appeared on the main screen.

“Are you sure? Press again to confirm.”

“Phew. Haha! That was close,” I said as I chuckled in relief.

Another explosion went off as another Representative failed at saving his world. This shook the room, causing another part of the vent to fall. When it landed on the pile of debris, it catapulted a piece of rubble directly towards the button. I didn’t have time to do anything else but shout again as it once again hit dead center.

“Are you really sure? Press again to confirm.”

“No.” I immediately ran over and closed the first button cover.

“Lad, we need to get far away from here immediately,” Evelina said.

“But you’re manning the helm!” He protested.

“You don’t understand! We don’t work here!”

“Of course you don’t, and neither do I, Evelina.”

“How… How do…”

“Kerbin,” Boomed The Species Representative.

============

The Alchrosite Quantized Distortion Barrier closed around the entire Kerbol system instantly, barring all matter, all energy, and all information from entry - including all forms of telepathic communication.

The Kerbals waited for the shield to lift.

 

It didn’t.

 

========== Space Ethan’s Private Journal

GHtW0jToStfRNsP9zki_oEP1RuhgvtM6ujwSDk1Yhk7EmQNk-sD2rK8_AqQBP3JFuSFaGmRVUVYEZfs84g07Lg3-GkPJ6jXAjIR03zIljPXkJ99SALVJAAIiZJZJ7djlLQrvGZs_

I was woken from my sleep on board the Voyager by Jebediah Kerman. He motioned to me that we should get inside the return module to talk privately, and I obliged. Once the hatch was closed, he addressed me.

“First off, I’m still mad at you. More at myself, but definitely still mad at you,” he said. “I’ll try not to hold a grudge, though.

“What’s this about?” I asked. He motioned to the window and passed me some glasses.

“There’s nothing there,” I said, but then I put the glasses on. “Woah.”

50BxCCBH_HLFkYva27yjvOMrtnHndEggmWu2GRHHLBWMkYme-o_hioUV6jYTef7moLhCwhInFdIq79m8E28zqGgf_N_43zF3KI6YW9pJmaStDuMkA6ozf7gsgbnkJwVW3zKDm3C2

“Don’t tell anyone yet, but in time, everyone will know. Likely even the humans, in time. I’m telling you because you, mister protagonist-syndrome, might know something.”

“Tell the humans? What about the whole test thing?”

“That doesn’t matter now. The meeting with The Species happened recently. As a way to prove the might of The Species, they put a shield around the Jslan solar system, one that, if they are telling the truth, even they can’t break. In the center of the council chamber they put a key, and if someone could destroy it, their world could live in peace forever… The Jslan was injured in the attempt. The shield moved planets many times, and nobody was able to destroy the key.”

“Did you destroy it?”

“I… I don’t know. The shield appeared right as the entity announced Kerbin. And at that instant, all communication was cut off. Those stars out there? An illusion. We can get out, but nothing can get in, as far as our testing shows.”

“So we can scheme until the next planet is shielded?”

“Ethan, this was four hours ago. The key has almost certainly been destroyed.” I pretended to be shocked. In reality, I knew exactly as much as he did, if not more. My connection with Star-Ethan had been cut off right as the shield spawned in. I had panicked for a long time, before finally managing to fall asleep.

“So… We won?”

“The galaxy lost. The “They can’t kill us all” escape method is, fortunately, not confined to just Kerbin, but a lot of it was here… And that makes it less likely to be successful. But we will never know what happens to them, not unless they can break the shield. Nevertheless, we should be ready in case they do.”

“You mean we’re stuck here?”

“Well… Yes. But we’re safe here… I think. Unless they are lying.”

“I… I’m never going to see Earth again.”

“But we’re safe, Ethan. Someone up there managed to save one planet’s worth of people, which is more victory than we could have ever reasonably hoped for. We can stop fighting. We can stop stressing. We can stop keeping secrets. We can stop being mad. The invasion… None of that matters any more. I mean, we have to deal with being cut off from the galactic supply chain, and being confined to just the resources in the Kerbol system… But we are safe. And as long as the Representatives survive, maybe the rest of the plans will work out, and maybe they can be safe as well.”

“Uh… So you said no more keeping secrets, no more being mad…”

“Yes. And I mean it. I assume you want to know about the true history of Kerbin.”

“About that… I...  Don’t be mad….”

“Don’t tell me you ran off again.” I took a deep breath.

“We ran off when I went out of the window. Evelina and I got cloned two of us returned, the other two, stole a spaceship, saw Meros and Jslan along the way, were snuck into the council meeting by Galactus The Cow, and may have crashed the entire space station into the black hole, destroying the key.” Jebediah was silent for a long time.

“So you weren’t making out with Evelina.”

“I wish.”

“First of all, just go for it, already… Second of all…  I know I said I wouldn't be mad, and I'm trying really, really hard... But... You killed the entire Galactic Council - and yourself - to destroy the key?!?!? You… You might have killed me!”

“Well they have clones, don’t they?”

“Not all of them!”

“Oh… But, like… The thing is, I don’t think I did it… We were going to, we were in the control room, about to press the button to drop the station into the black hole, but we decided it was a trap, and there was this weird old man who knew Evelina’s name, we were like “Nope, not pressing the button any more” and then my memory cuts off.”

“Lucky you, then… You at least have plausible deniability. You might not have pressed the button… We don’t all get that luxury.” He looked sadly into the distance.

“Jebediah Kerman. Stop it. You’ve spent centuries abhorring yourself for something that wasn’t even your fault.”

“So you did find out somehow. Do not bring Meros into this.”

“I didn’t bring Meros into this, you did.”

“I’m a monster.”

“You tried to save them from death, and they still died. You, and all of Kerbalkind, are heroes for trying.”

“Monsters… Just like we… we…”

“What?”

He looked at me with an angry glare. “Never mind.”

“Look, you found a species on the brink of extinction. You had no large scale FTL transportation ability, no prior first contact, and what do you do? You ask how you can help. You redirect every ship to saving Meros in any way you possibly can. Nobody knew that Meros would straight up detonate! With a planet that susceptible to straight up exploding, it is a miracle that it hadn’t by then!”

“Mention Meros one more time and I swear, I’ll pop my Illasticonian Crystal and zip off to deep space." I didn't know he kept one on him. "We will debrief your Kerbin clone on today’s events, and we will run a full memory extraction. Every detail. Who knows what else you have been hiding from us. You know what? I’m not even mad. I’m just tired. Tired of dealing with this, day in, and day out. I’m going to the other side of the ship. I need to process all of this. Don’t talk to me until I tell you it is okay.” Jebediah Kerman opened the hatch, stepped out, and shut it with a loud clang.

I looked back at the window, at the shield. So we had won… Or at least some of us had… But at what cost? And why didn’t it feel like a victory?

The hatch clanged again. Jebediah Kerman entered. “I need those glasses back.” I handed them over. “And one more thing… A fair trade. A world shattering secret for a world shattering secret.” He handed me his Kpad.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“It’s no secret that something is weird with the universe.”

“What do you mean?”

“The Union was founded under seven thousand years ago. We have found no evidence of advanced multi-species civilizations that predate us, and none that exist alongside us, besides The Species, even though the universe is billions of years old. Do you ever wonder why, Ethan?”

 

==========


Written nearly 6,000 years ago, Dr. Xeitri's historic paper was the first noteworthy credible publication to, at least somewhat definitively, establish high probability of the long-denied existence of the Second Great Filter. While many things have changed since then, the basic premise remains factually sound.


=== On The Second Great Filter and Its Horrifying Implications


=== Dr. Xeitri of Quiiiiznuvia


=== 653.7.2.1 AFC-Z


For well over six hundred years, the twelve species of the Great Interstellar Union have pondered many things about life itself - Who, what, where, and how much? In these ponderings, we have found truth and deception - deception of the self. For many hundred years we have lived in denial of the truth, praying to the Gods above and below that it not be true. For all the analysis of the scientists and discoveries of the explorers and the ponderings of the philosophers, they all point to one thing, and it doesn't take a genius to figure it out.


Since the conclusion of the Great Interstellar War, ten more species have been discovered, nine of whom were discovered via signatures emitted when they undertook the first voyage in a spaceship utilizing a Fate Drive (formerly known as a Star Drive), one of whom was encountered by chance.  At this rate, eleven species (counting the two Founding species) have discovered FTL travel in six hundred and fifty Ziquunodian years. That is roughly one species every sixty Ziquunodian years, give or take due to the small sample size. Given that the universe has more or less looked the same for well over a billion years, it is highly improbable that the Founders were the first ones. So, where is everyone?


By that logic, over a billion years, nearly seventeen million spacefaring civilizations should have come into existence, more than enough to make a Galactic Union a million times over. And yet in our explorations, we have found no union. In fact, the only time so far that two somewhat advanced FTL capable civilizations have met was at the onset of the Great Interstellar War.
The only known possible explanations are that we are the first (unlikely) and the existence of a Second Great Filter. 


Until recently, the answer was unknown, only speculated upon and denied. However, thanks to the efforts of the Explorers, we have now discovered no less than seventy two high-confidence worlds with more being discovered every year.


The Fate Drive is by far the lowest-tech form of FTL, but as everyone knows, it is also the most dangerous, as it is one of the few forms of FTL that project in reality, meaning any ship travelling sufficiently fast possesses the kinetic energy necessary to destroy a planet.. The Founders knew this almost from the start and made efforts to upgrade to a Class II FTL technology as soon as possible. However, this truth is much less universal than it was thought. None of the nine Fate capable successor species were aware of this fact.


And neither were the others.


Forty-three of the seventy-two high-confidence past-life candidate worlds have been determined to be destroyed in a Fate drive accident, with the others all falling to some First Great Filter cataclysm.
Discarding Species discovered via signatures (telling us where to look), the ratio of dead species discovered to live species discovered is a shocking seventy-two to one, and the one was discovered by the sheer coincidence if it being located near a site of scientific importance. The real number could be, and very likely is, much worse.


Based on current estimations, somewhere between 100 and 1000 intelligent species are thought to inhabit the galaxy at any given time. Thus, under the best reasonable circumstances, with 5,000 intelligent species, and only 5 million dead worlds, there would still be at a minimum one thousand dead worlds for every live one. One thousand forgotten cultures, one thousand forgotten lifetimes, one thousand stories, all for just one to be remembered.


But it gets worse.


Our current FTL signature scanning equipment cannot reach the next nearest galaxy just yet, but our long range FTL communications system would be theoretically capable of sending as well as detecting sufficiently energetic signals to and from the nearest 200 or so galaxies. This is an advanced technology that requires significant effort to develop and would not be available until well after Fate Drives have been phased out.
We have, as of yet, received no response.


If you cloned the current Union, sent it back ten million years, and killed it, we would have long since discovered its corpse. This implies that we are the first Union in the galaxy.


Unless advanced civilizations inevitably do not seek out other life (which I doubt), or are sufficiently advanced that they would not care about us (unlikely, we would still see them), we can conclude that there are no advanced civilizations in the nearest hundred galaxies.


It would be jumping to conclusions to draw conclusions based on one data point, but if one were to make the jump, they would say that we are the only (and possibly the first) Union of Species in a 5 million light year radius.
Life is abundant in the universe, but death is abundant in the universe. We are the only ones who have survived death.

 

 


And an update from 5,300 years ago by the Monk Ser Dektranus. This “speculation” was later proven mostly true.

 

=== A Speculation On The Death Of Worlds


=== Ser Dektranus


=== 1342.4.1.0 AFC-Z


I am a man of many years and many ambitions, which, of course, means I am a man of few years, so I will keep my words brief and my points concise.

When we discovered The Violent Ones, they were quick to point out how easily Fate Drives have been used as weaponry. They even showed us what a war using this weaponry would look like.

With this knowledge, our teams have analyzed the four hundred and eighty four planets thought to have been destroyed by Fate Drive accidents. Of those, four hundred and thirty two appear to have actually been destroyed by warfare utilizing Fate Weaponry.

We have treated The Violent Ones with such disdain and prejudice - We thought we were better than that. But, as it turns out, violence is not the exception. It is the rule.

I do not wish to hastily jump to conclusions. More analysis is required, but if this shall be proven correct...

Oh, the horror.


As of today, the current model stands as:

  • Life is relatively abundant
  • Intelligent life is relatively abundant
  • The vast majority of intelligent life exhibits violent tendencies
  • About half of all intelligent species fall due to a “First Great Filter Cataclysm”
  • The surviving violent species destroy themselves in wars utilizing Fate Weaponry
  • The surviving peaceful species destroy themselves in Fate Drive Accidents
  • In order for a species to survive this “Second Great Filter,” they must develop second generation FTL, or bypass Fate Drives entirely (The Kerbals are one of two known examples)
  • War drives innovation, the kind needed to invent second generation FTL in a reasonable amount of time
  • War between two violent Fate-Era species is unlikely due to the distances involved, and the short time spans between when a species becomes Fate capable and when they are destroyed
  • In addition it is even less likely, as violent species tend to develop Fate weaponry long before Fate Drives
  • A stalemate likely provides the best conditions for technological progression and peace talks (although only one data point exists)
  • Stalemates are highly unlikely
  • In the event that an advanced civilization does form, they are highly likely to find peaceful species, as Fate Drives produce easily trackable near instantaneous emissions
  • Fate Weaponry does not produce these emissions, so any advanced civilizations are not able to easily discover violent species.

Therefore, the sequence of events leading to the formation of advanced civilizations is incredibly small. 


An excerpt from a speech by Representative Chairman Ele Dar on Directive 17 - 1471.1.7.4 AFC-Z


“Great Species of the Union - I come to you with a new directive, one I hope you shall pass. It shall replace the thirteenth and sixteenth directives, as we can all agree that they are, as of now, obsolete. We now know of the true nature of the universe. We now know that we stand alone in the nearest several thousand galaxies as the only civilization known to have cheated the Second Great Filter. And we now know that violent species are not an unholy abhorrence - They are, unfortunately, the majority. The curtain of our bias in discovery has lifted, revealing our own prejudices, our own shortcomings, and our own violences. We must do our best to save all the life we can - And I mean All Life - from the same cataclysms we have just barely avoided. For this, it is required that we never, ever stray from peace, but in order to do that, we must embrace the violent, and show them the peace and love they hold within.”

Directive 17 - The Sacredness of Life

  1. Repeal of the First, Fourth, and Eighth Primary Objectives.
  2. Primary Objective Fourteen: The preservation of life.
  3. Primary Objective Fifteen: The preservation of peace.
  4. All intelligent species shall be protected from cataclysm at any expense.
  5. Top priority shall be given to discovering all of the intelligent life in the galaxy.
  6. Major exploration beyond the borders of the galaxy shall not be undertaken until (5) is reasonably complete.
  7. All intelligent species shall be granted entry into the Union after evaluations are complete, regardless of the results.
  8. Repeal of Directive Thirteen (The Rejection of Violence)
  9. Repeal of Directive Sixteen (The Expulsion of Violence)
  10. We shall Endeavour to pacify - by choice and not force and not chance - the violent species we have discovered and will discover at any and all cost.

==========


By choice and not force or chance, huh? As I look around the Voyager, I see a small amount of skill and a lot of chance. We were forced to come to Kerbin. And I sure did not choose to be here. Is that all the Council is? Just a bunch of hypocrites?

Or maybe I just didn’t have the full picture…

I looked out the window at the stars… Well, the fake stars… But out there… Millions of dead civilizations. A hundred thousand or more Meroses for every Kerbin. And, Earth… If we hadn’t been found, we may have gotten Fate weapons within my lifetime. How many worlds were out there, right now, making the same mistakes they - we all have?

I had just woken up and all I wanted to do was sleep, maybe even forever. Who could live knowing this?

If what I think happened happened, I did it… I pressed the button. How could I not have, one button to save my entire species? I just died. I killed the entire galactic government. I killed Evelina. Jebediah. Galactus. And I had ensured the safety of most of the Kerbals and Humans for basically forever if we knew what we were doing. This was probably a victory. A victory against The Species, although it sure didn't feel like a victory.

And yet, I felt nothing at all about all of that.

Instead, I felt broken, as the beautiful night sky was nothing but a graveyard full of ill intentioned men who fought and fell, and well intentioned men who strove to cross the void, only to face a cruel end at the hands of the cold, uncaring universe.

I began to weep.
 

 

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Ultimate Steve

Ultimate Steve

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And, back with another!

 

Chapter 31 - My Old New Normal

Spoiler

========== Ethan’s Public Blog

Heyyy, Kerbin! Sorry for being so long on this one, I had a very bad bout of space sickness recently and wasn’t feeling up to writing any of this.

First off, you all have probably noticed the Kerbals behaving strangely. I don’t know much more than you do, but I’ve talked to Jeb, and he has assured me that everything is alright, it is all under control, and at the current time, it is absolutely nothing you need to be worried about, and is probably good news.

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So, of course, two weeks ago, Alonya returned to the Voyager on board the Emerson.

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While we were all happy for her return, obviously, Cheng’s absence hung over us like a dark stormcloud… And below us was another dark stormcloud (the big Laythe storm)… And my stomach was a dark stormcloud… Believe me, it wasn’t fun.

But, right, the mission…

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The Emerson no longer had a docking port, so it was temporarily cast away into Laythe orbit… A morbid thought, but, well, there’s only 8 of us now, so we won’t need to use it for Kerbin entry any more…

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At this point I must give a shoutout to the trajectory team in mission control. Because of their efforts, it turns out, we didn’t need to worry about fuel nearly as much as we did.

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Firstly, we escaped from Laythe with a short burn of our engines. As we had been in an elliptical polar orbit, the following maneuvers weren’t exactly simple.

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Next up, we encountered Laythe a few orbits later after a few course corrections. This encounter corrected our inclination and shot us out far enough to encounter Tylo.

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This marked the last time I would ever see Laythe up close.

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Another course correction later, we were on track for two Tylo encounters. The first one would expand our orbit, and the second one, which would be propulsively assisted, would kick us all the way back to Kerbin.

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During the second Tylo encounter, shortly before our escape burn, I went EVA, officially to check the integrity of the heat shield, which obviously wasn’t needed due to the nano cameras, and whatnot, so I’ll confess the real reason, I just kinda wanted to see everything through my visor one last time.

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It’s weird to think how the hard part is basically over now. We just have to survive for another few months until we get back to Kerbin, then it’s over. Not that it will be easy, death by boredom is a big possibility…

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And then we fired the engines, and that was that… Well, we still have a course correction, and the actual Kerbin re-entry… But I’m not worried about that… For the most part, my work as an astronaut (if you think I’m deserving of the title, those things tend to spark a lot of flame wars) is done. Now it’s just the commute home.

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There’s something weird, as expected, at seeing these places getting smaller and smaller through the window… When that happened with Kerbin, at least I knew I’d probably be back some day…

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But here?

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I’ll almost certainly never be back.

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Anyway… That’s about where we are right now, the trajectory team is working on getting the Emerson back as well, just in case. I’ll update you when I know more.

========== Ground Ethan

It was Christmas a while ago, or at least it would have been on Earth. They let me bring a fake tree into my cell, which is fun, I guess. The guards have yet to provide a lock that Evelina can’t pick, and she keeps slipping notes under my door, wanting to sneak me out, and talking about what she’d been up to, and I answered back. I never accepted, though, as I had disappointed Jeb enough.

They did let us meet up a few times, though, which was nice of them I guess.

Turns out, full memory extraction isn’t as painful as I thought it would be, although it is a bit disconcerting that every single thought I have ever had is now in the Kerbal archives. I try not to think about it too much, though.

I tried to get them to make a version that could record dreams and play them back, but they said no. That would have made it worth it :(

The big thing is that, yesterday they let Evelina go (although she is apparently being shadowed by Kerbal agents wherever she goes, in case she starts to say something she isn’t supposed to… ). I’m told they will probably think of something for me eventually, but for the meantime, I’m still here… In this cell… With nobody to talk to but myself and my other self… I’d also have my third self, but, you know…

I can’t complain about the food, though. It’s pretty good.


========== Space Ethan

The Emerson trajectory is done now.

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Yesterday it flew by Vall, and in a bit it will fly by Tylo for a massive gravity assist that will send it the rest of the way home. We don’t really need to, it just seemed like the right thing to do.

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The ship has still been quiet. A while back there was word of doing a massive Whack-A-Kerbal tournament on the way back, but I don’t think we are all mentally okay enough to do that just yet.

Anyway, that’s pretty much all to report…


========== 

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========== Ground Ethan

The cell door clanged open, I looked up and saw none other than Jebediah Kerman himself.

“Welcome to jail,” I said.

“Yeah, sorry about that. You did steal a spaceship, though,” he replied.

“Fair.”

“Anyway, so here’s the deal… We’ve run many, many simulations… Tried a ton of things… But, well, the de-cloning machine doesn’t work on humans.”

“So… No recombination?”

“Correct. Now we could still find out how to de-clone you eventually, but the thing is, that technology was designed mostly by the Illasticonians, and we can’t exactly phone them up for technical support. So, for the time being, there’s going to be two of you.”

“Am I going to have to stay here?”

“No. We’ve been way too harsh already, to be honest… So, you are free… ish… Like, we can’t let people know it is you until we tell the humans.”

“I guess that makes sense.”

“So we need to send you somewhere under a false name where you will, and I really, really @^#%*&! mean it this time, stay. Out. Of. Trouble. And don’t you dare run off.”

“Right, who am I and where am I going?”

“You are now Jonathan Stuart.”

“Oh, that was my homecoming alias, right?”

“Yep, although I doubt many people remember. You, Jon, have just been transferred to Karbing, a standard Human City. You have just been adopted by Bruce Edwards - “

“Wait, my uncle?”

“Yep.”

“It’s been months! Years, even! How long is the conversion?”

“Hold on, let me finish.”

“Does he know?”

“Everything. Including about The Species. Your parents do, too.”

“Why am I not living with them?”

“That would raise too much suspicion. Someone who looks exactly like Ethan Edwards in the Edwards household? Your uncle is much more low profile. You’ll blend right in.”

“Right.”

“In two weeks, you are going to apply for an internship at the local airport, which we’ll make sure you get, unless you don’t want to get it, of course, and this will be both an actual job and a cover for us to talk when needed. You will be attending the local education center in what is the rough equivalent of your last year or two in high school.”

“School? I’m going to be so rusty… I haven’t done actual math in so long…”

“Here is your class schedule, we can change it if you need to. Here’s a pamphlet on all of the societal stuff you missed out on from being in space. And here’s some clothes for the trip. The rest of your stuff is already at the apartment.”

“Right… Thank you, Jebediah… But what about, well, Evelina and I?”

“It isn’t finalized yet, but we’ll figure something out… Most of the higher ups want you two permanently separated, as you get into so much trouble together.”

“Higher ups? Aren’t you the Galactic Representative of Kerbin?”

“That just means I’m in charge of interstellar relations. I’m not in charge of Kerbin. We have a president. Did you never think to look that up?”

“I, well - “

“I shouldn’t do this, for all the good you’ve done me… You owe me one, but I’m pulling all the strings I have to figure something out for you two.”

“Ok. Thank you so much.”

“Follow me.” I exited the cell and followed him up the stairs. A minute later I walked outside the Administration Building.

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I froze and took in the view. Jeb turned around.

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“Well? Your flight is waiting!”

“Sorry, it’s just… I’m outside. Without a disguise. And I’m supposed to be here. I just… Like… I haven’t been this, well, free, in a while.”

==========

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“Bye, Jeb,” I thought. On board the plane, which was one of those rocket planes that I started this grand adventure on, was a mixture of Kerbals and humans, just going about their normal lives… Normal. I hadn’t been normal in a long, long time.

“Hey, you kinda look like Ethan Edwards!” said the passenger who sat next to me. I turned around, it was a guy about my age who spoke in a Russian accent.

“Oh, uh… Yeah, I get that a lot. I wish I was him.”

“Oh, don’t we all! Zipping around Jool, having fun, saving humanity…”

“I mean, like, he’s just had a crewmate die.”

“Yeah… But like in general, overall, you know.”

“Yeah, I know. Anyway, I’m Jon.”

“Dimitri. Nice to meet you. Hey, hold on… Jonathan Stuart?” I was really weirded out.

“How do you know my name?”

“Duuuude, you’re a legend! You crashed the KSC homecoming, stole everyone’s girlfriends, started a huuuuuuge fight, and then you and Evelina Lindström just straight up vanished! The Evelina Lindström! And then there was like this huge reverse meteor!”

“That was a while ago, people still remember that?”

“It was only a couple months! Of course we remember! There’s, like, fanfiction about you!”

“Really?”

“Yeah, like in the most popular one, you basically seduced Evelina and rode a meteor to explore the stars!” Huh, not too far from the truth. “So, what actually happened that night?”

“Oh, uh, well…” I struggled to think of a plausible explanation. “I mean, that sounds way, way more entertaining than what actually happened, let’s go with that.

“Come on, don’t leave me hanging, dude!” There was a loud noise from the rear of the aircraft (spacecraft? Airliner? Spaceplane? Spaceliner?) as the engine started up.

“Ladies, Gentlemen, Kerbals, and everyone in between, this is your captain speaking. Please put your heads back, prepare for engine ignition in T minus ten seconds.” Dimitri broke into a huge grin.

“I’m going to go to space!” He shouted.

“Hold on tight,” I said. “It gets wild quickly.”

“You’ve done this before???” He asked. “That’s so cool!”

“It’s just like riding a reverse meteor!”

“T minus five… Four… Three… Two… One… Ignition!” the pilot announced. The massive engine ignited, and we were pushed back into our seats.

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“WOOHOO!” shouted Dimitri. The aircraft took off, and slowly climbed and turned to the north.

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“Mach 1 achieved,” announced the pilot.

“I’m supersonic!!!” Shouted Dimitri.

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“WOOHOO!” we both shouted as the mach effects turned into re-entry effects.

“Burnout. Estimated apogee, 75 kilometers,” the pilot reported. “You are now free to move about the cabin.”

“Funny, when we left Earth, the age of suborbital space tourism was, like, so hyped, even though New Shepard and SpaceShipTwo kept getting delayed… And now I’m here, floating in space around a spaceship!” Dimitri shouted as he unbuckled his seat belt.

“You know what… You take the window seat, Dimitri,” I said.

“Yo, for real? Jonathan Stuart, you are my new favorite person!” He giddily floated around.

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“Welcome to space, passengers!” announced the pilot.

“I’m a cosmonaut!” shouted Dimitri.

A few minutes later, we were back in our seats, re-entering the atmosphere.

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“Oof, that’s… quite… intense!” said Dimitri through the G forces.

“Very… Much… Yes!” I responded, struggling to reply. If I was having this much trouble, Space Ethan was really going to have trouble with how long he’d been in space… And how little he exercised.

“Hey, I can hear you!” He said in my head.

“So… What brings you to Karbing?” He managed, once the G forces had subsided.

“I’m moving there.”

“Oh, neat! I’m actually from there, I can show you around! We should hang out, like, a lot!”

“I think that’s a great idea!”


========== Space Ethan’s Public Blog

Okay, yeah, yeah, the Emerson finished its burns, and will get to us shortly before we get to Kerbin in the event we need it again.

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But the big thing… Everyone felt good enough to start the Whack-A-Kerbal tournament!

So you’ve probably read the official reports on it, or maybe you have watched it live, but if you want my perspective, you have come to the right place!

So, just a refresher, Whack-A-Kerbal in its current form, is a real time strategy game, of sorts. It is played on a “board” of spherical electromagnets and iron spheres. These can orbit each other.

Now you are probably asking, “How is that possible? Magnets have two poles, so orbiting is weird and maybe impossible!” I thought that too, but apparently Kerbals found out how to make magnetic monopoles long before they even got to Duna, and we still haven’t figured out how to. As for how they do such a complex solar system using only two polarities of magnets, it gets weird, and there are limitations, but computers and variable electromagnets deal with most of that.

Anyway, the goal is to take over every planet, destroying your opponents in the process. This is done by launching ships (tiny metal spheres with lights on them) of various types (each planet has a launcher embedded in it which is computer controlled), which are built with resources which are gathered by buildings. And the resources/buildings are computer controlled, and are what the player can decide to build on each planet.

Yes, this is a combat game, made by the Kerbals. Don’t ask me how that happened.

So the strategy is obviously what to build and in what order to do stuff. The skill is how to launch the ships so they can gravity assist to the right places (although they do get a small amount of compressed air or magnetic interaction to be used for course corrections). But the thing that makes the game so awesome? The actual Whack-A-Kerbal functionality.

There’s a button everyone has on their dashboards, the Whack-A-Kerbal button. You press this and exclaim “Whack-A-Kerbal!” right before you plan to do something epic. Based on how that actually ends up working, the other players can decide how epic that was and give you a temporary resource production multiplier - so while winning is great, it is advantageous to win in style. The button is called that, because, in the first ever game of Whack-A-Kerbal, one of the Kerbals accidentally got whacked in the head.

This tournament will be nine games long, as is tradition, with each taking place on a different board. The winner of each game will get eight points, second place seventh, etc. all the way down. And whoever has the most points at the end of the tournament wins.

Game 1 happened yesterday, on a very unique custom map we created. The game is set up in two separate hitchhiker modules, separated by the open hatch. On one hitchhiker module, the magnets are set up like in the Kerbol system, and in the other one, like the Solar system. The Kerbals started in the Kerbol half and the humans started in the Sol half. Within the systems, we chose our starting planets in a random order (in future rounds, the people in last place will choose first).

Here are the starting locations:

Bill - Kerbin
Bob - Laythe
Valentina - Duna
Jebediah - Eeloo
Jack - Earth
Marie - Europa
Me - Oberon (moon of Uranus)
Alonya - Titan

So, my starting strategy was to very quickly get to a moon of Neptune, and maybe also to Pluto, get a ton of resources from all of those moons, and rush research, sacrificing defense in favor of a stronger late game. I was going to lie low and be non aggressive.

“Three… Two… One… Start!” shouted Jebediah from the other room.

“Ok first off, I’m going to say,” said Jack, “If you so much as touch Phobos, you die.”

“That’s weird, nobody took Mars,” I responded as I launched my first colony ship towards another Uranian moon, and my second colony ship on a long trajectory to Neptune (we each started with two). I used my starting resources to set up mines on Oberon.

“Mars is cool and all, but rings are cooler,” said Alonya, who had begun hopping around on the moons of Saturn.

“Oh, no!” shouted Marie. We looked up at the board towards Jupiter. Marie’s colony ship had missed its target and was now on an elliptical orbit with a periapsis somewhere around Venus.

“Excellent piloting, Marie! One small step for Man!” said Jack as he landed on the Moon. “I’m going to Mars now, by the way, so don’t you even - “ Marie’s errant colony ship hit Mars. “ - try.”

“I totally meant to do that,” said Marie. My factories were complete, so I began sending out colony ships to the local moons. My other colony ships had arrived. Several minutes passed, as the humans didn’t want to make the first move. I took this opportunity to advance my research significantly. I now had the production capacity and know-how to construct Tier 7 combat ships.

“Whack-A-Kerbal!” announced Jack suddenly as he launched a massive invasion fleet off of Kerbin, headed towards Mars. Due to the nature of the game, half of the ships missed, but the other half connected, and after a short resistance by Marie, Mars fell to Jack. We agreed on a 1.25x multiplier for that action.

“I didn’t want Mars, anyway!” she protested. I stealthily snuck some colony ships into the inner solar system to claim Venus, which had gone unclaimed for some reason. The last major unclaimed body was Mercury at that point.

“Hey! I see you!” said Alonya. I guess I wasn’t as stealthy as I thought I was. “I was gonna have Venus!” She launched a ton of warships towards Venus.

“Sheesh, okay, I’ll take Mercury instead,” I said, redirecting my ships to Mercury.

“Make way!” shouted Bob from the other room as a small fleet of ships (colored blue, Bob’s color) came into the solar system through the hatch. Bob followed shortly after.

“Careful, we don’t got no planets!” Jack said.

“Val has gone on a rampage!” Bob reported. “I don’t got any planets! Jeb and I tried to hold her off but it didn’t work! Don’t mind me, I’m going to take Pluto.”

“Oi, Pluto’s mine!” I responded.

“Oooh, things be getting spicy!” said Jack.

“Fight! Fight!” said Marie.

“You know what… Whack-A-Kerbal!” I shouted, as I launched many ships, and used them (rather unrealistically) to eject one of my moons outwards towards Pluto. The two bodies collided and were now considered inhospitable, although they still orbited. “If I can’t have Pluto, nobody can!” My fleet of warships was now in a highly elliptical orbit. Bob ended up landing on a moon of Saturn instead, and begun fighting Alonya.

“Ooooh, that’s got to be, what, 1.5x?” Marie asked.

“Just you wait,” I said. “It’s not over yet!” Pluto’s corpse fell into the solar system, passing by Jupiter, throwing a few of its moons out of Jupiter’s sphere of influence. I had intended only for it to hit one of them, but Ganymede got ejected from the solar system entirely and actually flew through the hatch over to the Kerbol system.

“Okay, that’s worth at least four,” Alonya said as Marie chased her moon through the hatch to see what would become of it.

“Yesss!” The wayward moons kept causing havoc within the inner solar system, just as I had planned. I used my insane 4x production multiplier to launch a fleet of tier 8 warships, which I used to attack Earth and Mars, eliminating Jack from the game.

“How am I the first out?” He said. “I took over Mars, and Bob has been hanging out for the past few minutes with like two ships left!” Bob’s two ships, out of fuel, immediately crashed into Neptune.

“Well, at least I’m not last!” joked Bob.

“Guysguysguys!” said Marie as she came back into our half of the game, followed shortly by Ganymede, which she had managed to gravity slingshot back towards the solar system.

“What?” Alonya and I asked at the same time. We heard a shout from the other room.

“Bill has been eliminated, and - Ethan, what happened to the solar system?”

“Oh, those moons definitely wreaked havoc.”

“Anyway, I’m in no fighting condition. Val and Jeb have allied, and are preparing a Solar invasion force!”

“Alonya, alliance?”

“You bet, Ethan.” We launched a defense fleet into solar orbit as Marie circled around on Ganymede, not being able to do much. She caught a gravity assist off of Uranus and entered the inner solar system. “SIKE! WHACK-A-KERBAL!” she shouted as she launched a huge invasion force from her one planet and took over the now undefended inner solar system - up to Mars - with no resistance. We agreed on a 2x for that.

“Okay, I didn’t see that coming. You’re going to pay for that!” I shouted, moving my defense force to attack Mars.

“I wasn’t lying, though!” Marie said with a wicked grin. At that moment, Jeb and Val came through the hatch, grinning. I could see their invasion fleet following in short order.

“Whack-A-Kerbal!” I shouted, as I redirected another moon towards the hatch. This severely disrupted the fleet, at the narrow choke point, crashing many of the ships, but they just kept coming. “How do you have that many ships?!?!?!?!” I asked, bewildered.

“I got the crashed alien ship on Laythe event!” cackled Jeb as he attacked Uranus and Neptune. “NOOOO!” I shouted. They were going to win, but if I could outlast Marie and Alonya, I could come in third. I took the remainder of my fleet and attacked Mercury, as Marie and Alonya attacked Jeb and Val. Alonya died first, shortly followed by Marie, and then me. I came in third.

“Well, not bad for the first game of the tournament,” I said. “Man, that event needs to be nerfed, it is so overpowered.” Jeb and Val then had a huge epic final battle, involving the repositioning of several planets, but I can’t do it justice, you are just going to have to watch the video! Val ended up winning, though. I’m quite satisfied with my 6 points, however, and the Kerbals obviously have the advantage of having a ton of experience.

Anyway, that was great… I think we are mostly back to business as usual up here. We’ve mostly been able to stop moping around. A welcome change. It feels normal up here, again.


========== Ground Ethan’s Private Journal

A few days ago, I saw my parents again!!! I could go on for pages and not do it justice, so I’m going to give it time to sink in and talk about it in a future journal entry. But today’s big thing - I went to school!

And - Oh boy, you won’t believe it. Thank you, Jeb.

My first few classes, I got so, so many “You look just like Ethan!” comments, but it went mostly alright, and I didn’t forget as much as I thought I had, except in Math, where I had forgotten pretty much everything…

One of my next classes was basic exogeology, which I was a bit confused as to why it was on the schedule, but hey, I could always change it later, right? First off, it turns out, Dimitri is in the class. I didn’t even know he went to this school, and he shares a class with me! This must be why Jeb put me in here! I walk in, he excitedly waves, introduces me to some of his friends, it’s going great.

So I sit down next to him, and then the teacher, Mr. Brockhart, walks in.

“Good threvening, everyone,” he said. Threvening? Did he mean evening? I’d have to look that one up later. “Welcome back to Intro To Exogeology. Today we will be continuing our discussions about Odnuforp Crater. But first, we actually have two new students today, so, Jonathan Stuart, everyone here already knows who you are… And the other one… Appears to be absent… Weird. Anyway, Jonathan, what do you know about Odnuforp Crater?”

“Chill out, it’s his first day here,” said Dimitri.

“Odnuforp Crater, on Bop, is a crater filled with spherical rocks which were created after an asteroid impact, causing rock to melt and freeze in midair. It is notable for being the location of the Bop monolith, and therefore, the location of the landing on the Voyager mission.”

“That is correct! You certainly know your stuff!”

“Because I was there,” I wanted to say.

“Anyway, we’re going to talk more about impact dynamics today, and the asteroid itself - “ And at that point, the door opened again.

“Sorry I’m late,” she said. I turned my head towards that familiar voice and broke into a grin. Dimitri’s jaw dropped.

“No way,” he whispered. I have a class with… With…”

“Ah yes, class, this is our second new student, Evelina Lindström! Welcome to Intro To Exogeology! I think there’s a free seat somewhere. Ah yes, there’s one next to Jonathan! We hope you feel at home here!”

“Oh believe me, I will!” she said.


========== Space Ethan’s Private Journal

The announcement is tomorrow and I don’t know how to feel about that. The Kerbals wanted to wait a while before telling us, just to make sure the barrier wasn’t a fake, and that it would indeed hold long term. They didn’t have to wait a couple months, but, hey, I’m not in charge.

Some people wanted to wait until after the landing of the Voyager, just to offer a nice sense of finality to this, but it doesn’t look like we are going to be getting that. I think they want us to be a positive thing to look forwards to after what, frankly, will be a tremendous shock. I can’t imagine that anyone will take “Okay so there are these evil aliens who are taking over the universe, but we somehow managed to win, and you’re never going to see Earth again, and oh by the way we’re going to turn aging on again” well at all.

But then again… I don’t know if I really want to go back to Earth.

My life, especially Ground Ethan’s life over these past few months, has been, quite frankly, amazing. It felt great to be, well, normal again. On Kerbin, everyone, and I mean pretty much everyone, is cool to be around. It’s so peaceful. So beautiful. So fun. I’ve hung out with tons of people, went to so many different things, and I have had a total blast.

Ok, yeah, maybe all of the kissing has biased me…

But, like, my old life couldn’t hold a candle to this, and I think many other people feel the same way. This is pretty much a utopia. Here, nobody has to worry about getting through the day, as the Kerbals have constructed a society which is almost, but not quite, post scarcity. Nobody goes hungry, nobody is thirsty, nobody gets sick, few hate, many love, borders are gone… Everyone is, for the most part, content, and even happy.

Sending us back to Earth is probably the more disruptive option at this point.

But, yeah… Tomorrow, the world is going to change… Not sure if for the better, or the worse.

They figured out the de-cloning machine, but I have no intention of using it until I’m safely back on Kerbin, as I would not give up my Kerbin life to be whole again.

A few days ago, the Emerson rendezvoused with us. No good pictures, it kinda hung out behind the ship most of the time, but you can kinda see its solar panel sticking out there.

qDetS2T.png

And I can see Kerbin again now. It is beautiful.

dhWvfwr.png

I think in a week, when we land, I’m going to be sad that it is over.

But most of all, despite having toured the Moons of Jool, defeating The Species in interplanetary nuclear combat, journeying to the edge and the centre of the galaxy, and getting the girl… I’m just… Kind of unsatisfied.

Real life tends to not have satisfying endings, unlike in storybooks and fairytales… But like, is this it? Against the most powerful foe in the universe, a tiny portion of the galaxy survives and just abruptly goes back to normal? And, come on, this has to be part of their plan… I’m beginning to think they want to keep us here. Maybe putting us here was the least energy intensive method to keep us from disrupting them? But that wouldn’t make sense…

But why do I want more? I have so much, and the Humans and the Kerbals are living in safety and in peace and in harmony. I have it all, and yet I want more… Why? Am I really that selfish?

Now, it’s just about the end of our Voyage… The end of our adventure… And we don’t have the answers. We probably never will.

Is this the end? It can’t be, can it?

 

 

…Right?
 

 

 

 

Edited by Ultimate Steve
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Kerbalstar

Kerbalstar

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Posted

How dare you post a chapter whilst I was in the middle of my reread?!

Anyway, this was brilliant as usual... here's hoping this isn't actually the end, at all. Man, I hadn't gotten to the end of my reread yet, and I need to now to remember exactly what as going to happen to Star-Evelina/Ethan... I hope they didn't actually die, that would be very sad. :( But I'm still kind of betting on that diquantum thingma-whatchamacallit scanner coming in play, as this is the climax (presumably), but we'll see.

Also, am I unobservant, or is this the first chapter were Evelina's last name has been stated? 

Anyway, looking forward to 32!

PS. Since I didn't say it last time, I totally get the lack of motivation, there was a project I was working on that I dropped off of working on for a year, but partially thanks to this, I've started working on it again. 

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obney kerman

obney kerman

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Posted
5 hours ago, Ultimate Steve said:

it is absolutely nothing you need to be worried about, and is probably good news.

Well, now nobody will be worried at all (/s).

5 hours ago, Ultimate Steve said:

Ok, yeah, maybe all of the kissing has biased me…

lol

They're coming back to kerbin! Let's hope nothing... unexpected happens.

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Ultimate Steve

Ultimate Steve

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9 hours ago, Kerbalstar said:

But I'm still kind of betting on that diquantum thingma-whatchamacallit scanner coming in play,

I will spoil one thing for you, that is one of those abandoned directions I was talking about, completely forget that exist please! Maybe it diquantumed itself out of existence or something lol.

9 hours ago, Kerbalstar said:

as this is the climax (presumably)

Yes, this is the beginning of the climax! The story will be over before chapter 40, but I can't say when in there the end will be.

9 hours ago, Kerbalstar said:

 

Also, am I unobservant, or is this the first chapter were Evelina's last name has been stated? 

I think so. If in your reread you come across it anywhere, let me know, because I vaguely remember stating it somewhere but wasn't able to find it. Lindstrom (I don't have time to copy paste the cool o right now) is probably much cooler than whatever I came up with in the past, though.

8 hours ago, obney kerman said:

Well, now nobody will be worried at all (/s).

Nobody at all!

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Kerbalstar

Kerbalstar

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Posted
11 minutes ago, Ultimate Steve said:

I will spoil one thing for you, that is one of those abandoned directions I was talking about, completely forget that exist please! Maybe it diquantumed itself out of existence or something lol.

Ah, I see. Understandable. Wait, what we were we talking about? I don't remember any diquantum whatcha-ma-callits, not even a triquantum thing-a-ma-bob. 

12 minutes ago, Ultimate Steve said:

Yes, this is the beginning of the climax! The story will be over before chapter 40, but I can't say when in there the end will be.

Oooh, exciting news. I can't wait to see how this epic saga ends! 

13 minutes ago, Ultimate Steve said:

If in your reread you come across it anywhere, let me know, because I vaguely remember stating it somewhere but wasn't able to find it

Will do, although I don't remember it being stated, which led to me in this chapter going "oh, Evelina has a last name now, cool!", lol. It is certainly a cool name, and it helps remind me that she's actually Sweedish and I should give her an accent in my head.

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Maria Sirona

Maria Sirona

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Posted (edited)

Ö isn't just a cool o, it's its entire own letter. And also, i know it is especially stated Evelina is swedish, but nah! I am a finn! I'll make her an ålander (BTW Å is its own letter too) in my headcanon! For context, Åland is an archipelago in southwestern Finland the people of which speak mostly swedish

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Ultimate Steve

Ultimate Steve

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50 minutes ago, iamn00b said:

...this isn't the end, right? 

No, it is not!

Chapter 32 - The Fall Of The Galactic Union

Spoiler

The Alchrosite Quantized Distortion Barrier closed around the entire Kerbol system instantly, barring all matter, all energy, and all information from entry - including all forms of telepathic communication.

The Kerbals waited for the shield to lift.


Ethan looked at Evelina. Evelina looked at Ethan.

“Don’t you dare,” she said.

“You said it yourself. It’s death and enslavement either way.”

“That was all the way back on Kerbin!”

“If there’s a chance, I have to.”

“No you don’t! We can think of something else!”

“If I don’t, I’ll never forgive myself.”

“Ethan!”

“Evelina, I love you. I’m sorry!”

Ethan Edwards pressed the button.

Instantly, the main gravimetric generators of the space station that housed the Galactic Council Chamber, which itself housed the remaining 39 living Galactic Representatives of the Milky Way Galaxy, shut off. The station itself, which had stood as a shining beacon of technological progress, acceptance, democracy, and pacifism for millennia shuddered, hesitated for a fraction of a second as if pleading to the Gods above and beneath, should they exist, for one more moment, one more chance, one more fulfillment of the ideals its builders dedicated themselves and their lifetimes to with steadfast devotion and dedication, slipped beneath the covers, beneath the waves, beneath the event horizon of the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A*.

If its occupants had been closely watching the windows, they would have seen untellable sights and very well may have been driven mad by the majestic wonder of the universe. However, the sailors of the galaxy had only moments to behold the utter beauty and chaos as the station’s systems failed one by one, and it drew ever closer to whatever laid at the center.

What happened next, cannot be described in this language, or any for that matter, so an allegory - or, a parable, if you will, must suffice instead. This is not what happened, but nonetheless can be useful.

Imagine, for one second, you are the God of this universe. You spent eternities crafting the laws of physics, creating the structures of the universe in their spectacular and utter beauty, only for your creations to cleverly devise ways to exploit all that you have created. First bending matter, then light, then molecules, then atoms, and then, the fabric of spacetime itself, and beyond - far, far beyond. Having to keep up with them to prevent their exploits from getting out of hand is getting annoying. Remember that time they found a hole in quantum mechanics that you tried to BS your way out of by inventing the “Quantum Spectrum” which led them to finding out how to make four and a half different types of warp drive? A hastily thrown together solution will cause so much trouble in the long run. So when a massive space station filled with the latest and greatest universe breaking, physics shattering technological wizardry began hurtling towards the one place in the universe where the laws of reality cease to function, requiring tons of effort to find out how it might work without introducing any new exploits, and it has already been a long day and you just want to go back to designing flowers again, you might hesitate for a moment, although a long while for them, and end up just saying “screw it” and give it a boost back to where it game from, as you aren’t paid enough to deal with stuff like that.

==========

Hi.

If you find this, someday, and by some odds you aren’t The Species, hello. I’m Ethan Edwards, as you have probably gathered from the rest of this. It is highly unlikely that I will survive the next 24 hours, and it could happen at any moment. This could be my last journal entry. I’ll take the journal with me but I will leave a copy here. If this cuts off in the middle, follow the Neutron Stars, assuming they haven’t been moved or deleted. But this is what happened.

*BANG*

There was a dark flash of intense white and purple light, then a bright flash of black light, however in the worlds that works, and then - I literally can’t describe it with words, the inside of a black hole. I mean, surely people have been in black holes and lived to tell the tale with all the technology they have these days. But I do not possess the words to describe the beauty and the horror.

It was awesome.

And terrifying.

A couple seconds later, after a lot of shaking, we just kinda popped back out of the black hole, right in orbit, with whatever I had turned off operational again. Then a solid two seconds passed in silence, with me and Evelina just staring at each other in shocked silence.

“Sorry, I must have sneezed,” Lad said. Instantly hundreds, if not thousands of alarms began blaring at once. They popped up on the screen too fast for me to read them. The station shook, and one loud electronic voice began shouting “EVACUATE! EVACUATE! STATION UNDER ATTACK!”

Out the front window I saw what could only be a Species battle fleet beginning to fire upon us. I glanced at the screen that showed the council chamber itself. The representative from The Species vanished, along with the Key to Kerbin. So it hadn’t been destroyed… All this effort for nothing!

The station shook again. Evelina grabbed my hand and began pulling me towards the exit. I began running along with her, but then had a realization. I broke away and ran back.

“ETHAN! What are you doing, we have to go!”

“I have to get the letter!” I shouted, running back to the control panels.

“Just come!”

“The monolith showed me!” Which was the truth. A weight I had finally been able to lift off my shoulders. The monolith… compels you to keep certain things a secret until it becomes relevant, even if you do not fully understand it… I have no secrets left now, such a relief. But whatever I saw in the black hole completed my understanding… And it was telling me I needed that letter.

Sparks erupted from the walls as the station took another heavy hit. There it was, on the floor. I reached over, and snagged it.

At that moment, as I turned to run, a shot hit the massive windows at the front of the control room, shattering them, depressurizing the room and sucking me violently out into the cold void of space. I briefly looked back and saw Evelina clinging to a support. I looked at the station and saw a massive ship pull away from the docking array, shielding many smaller ships from the onslaught of projectiles from The Species’ battlefleet. I looked down, and saw the supermassive black hole beneath me draw ever closer. I looked at the letter, and realized that the monolith, somehow, thought I should die, and that whatever was in Lad’s letter to Galactus must remain secret forever.

“Oh well. That was fun,” I thought.

And then someone grabbed my arm.

I looked up, and there he was, Lad himself, that sleepy, frail old man, gripping my arm with the strength of a thousand tigers and lions. “I’ve got you!” He shouted.

“But who’s got you?!?!?” I tried to shout, in vain, as, well, sound does not travel in a vacuum… But how did I hear him then??? Lad pulled me, flying through space, at an absolute velocity of faster than the speed of light, back through the shattered windows of the space station, grabbed Evelina, and then… somehow… phased both of us through the nearest door into a portion of the station that was still pressurized. I dropped to my knees gasping for air, holding my ears as the pain from going from 1 atmosphere to 0 and back again in less than 15 seconds was too much for me to bear at that moment.

“Who… Who are you?” asked Evelina.

“Shush. Get my letter to Galactus,” he said with a sly grin.

Another alarm began blaring. “STATION INTEGRITY CRITICAL. LOSS OF SUSPENSION IMMINENT.”

“I believe that is my cue, stand back!” he said, pulling out what appeared to be an Illasticonian crystal, but glowing orange, and with many other small gadgets attached.

“No, wait - “ Evelina said, but it was too late. Lad crushed the crystal and instantly disappeared, accompanied by more of those strange beams of black light. The energy pushed us both back against the nearest wall.

“Well then. No time, let’s go!” shouted Evelina.

“Where!” I managed through the pain.

“Anywhere but here.” She helped me up, clutching her own ears in the process. We began running through the corridors, as many other aliens did the same. We blindly followed them, and eventually burst through double doors that led into the Council Chamber itself. It was mostly vacated, but was burning. The bodies of several dead representatives lay strewn around.

My eye caught Jebediah Kerman on the stage. His eye caught mine. He was lying down, bleeding, near where the Key to Kerbin used to be. I ran over to him.

“No time!” Evelina said.

“He has a ship.”

“Ethan… Of course.” Jeb managed. Apparently our disguises had stopped working in the chaos.

“Come on, Jeb, we’ve gotta get out of here!”

“Of course it’s you, who would appear to me at my death… It’s usually Val, or Xanth, or The Last Merosian… I tried, Ethan, I tried… I used every single last crystal…”

“Snap out of it, Jeb! You’re not going to die, and I’m really here!” Jeb sat up, with an annoyed look on his face, purely out of bewilderment and spite.

“I said not to run off, and you did so much more than run.” Another huge explosion rocked the station. “I’ll be mad at you later. Pick me up, get me to that door right there.” We both grabbed an arm and walked him out of the burning room. I noticed Representative Kareen of the Jslans, slumped over in the corner. I quickly ran over and tucked her (well they have like four genders or something so that may be the wrong word, sorry to assume) under my other arm. She looked up at me and said nothing.

We exited the council chamber. Jeb directed us to a pod. The moment we were seated, along with several others, it accelerated to a blistering speed. Jeb programmed a destination, and we were there in under 30 seconds. The doors to the pod opened, and we ran out into a massive, multi kilometer long docking array, with ships departing left and right as more and more of the station’s systems failed.

“About time, Jeb!” shouted an eight foot tall, yellow, small headed humanoid.

“Xanth, I told you to leave without me!”

“Optional, I have clones.” He spotted Evelina and I. “This is ponderous. Please, allow me.” He scooped up me, Jeb, Evelina, and Kareen and put them under one, very strong arm and began sprinting down the hallway. “A pleasure to meet you, Ethan Edwards, I have heard much about your exquisite exploits.”

“Do you always talk like - “

“A robot? It is simply my fear response. I am quite like the Kerbals conversationally under normal circumstances.”

“Sorry, that was probably offensive.”

“None taken.” Another alarm blared, as the station began to roll to one side. A shot hit one of the ships that were parked directly in front of us.

“Oh. That was our ship,” said Xanth.

“Never fear, Galactus is here!” said Galactus as he raced down the hallway in what looked like a large go-kart with a race car engine. He stopped by us, we got inside, and he put the pedal to the metal and took us down another few berths until we arrived at his TNT ship. “You all have space suits right?” But it was too late, for another shot had broken the ship away before we could enter.

“NO!” shouted Jeb.

“My nachos!” shouted Galactus.

“Please, get on!” shouted someone from the ship next door. Xanth scooped up Galactus under his other arm, along with another alien he came across along the way, and dove into the small transport ship, which undocked and fired up its engines before the doors had even had time to seal properly.

The small ship darted away from the Galactic Council Chamber with a roar. I looked behind us, out the rear window, as the station, under heavy fire from at least a dozen Species ships, broke into two, then three, and then more, and then slipped chunk by chunk into the black hole. Suddenly the ship’s engines whined, and the ship began to creak.

“No!” shouted the ship’s pilot, a short, red alien with six arms.

“The docking guider beam focusers are destroyed!” reported the copilot. “We’re gonna fall in unless we get the FTL online NOW!”

“It isn’t charged yet!” shouted the engineer. “I told you we should have replaced the triquantum bearings!”

“We could do a Fate jump,” suggested the pilot.

“Do it,” said Jeb.

“Representative Jebediah… But that’s illegal!”

“That is an order.” Several buttons were pressed, many levers were pulled, and I tried to find something to hold onto. I spotted one Species ship to our right.

“Guys, The Species is firing on us!” I shouted.

“Emergency FTL in Five… Four…” a shot connected, but it was a glancing blow. “NOW!” The pilot slammed three of his fists down on a red button and the small ship jumped to beyond light speed. Stars flashed by, but only for a few seconds, before it stopped. We were now decently far away, but I could still see the accretion disc of the black hole through the rear window.

“Jeb, you could have killed a planet!” shouted Kareen.

“No, Kareen, you don’t understand.”

“Oh I understand perfectly fine!”

“Kareen, talk to your clones.” She stopped for a second.

“...Oh.”

“Xanth, Evelina, and Ethan, you too.” Xanth froze. Evelina looked puzzled.

“Hey ground Ethan? Space Ethan?” I asked. I received no response. “Hello? HELLO? PLEASE! ANSWER ME!”

“Wait… The shield blocks telepathy,” I said.

“Yes, but I have several clones, many of whom weren’t behind the shield,” Jeb said. “I can’t talk to any of them.”

“Neither can I,” said Kareen and Xanth simultaneously.

“Oh,” I said.

“Something bad has happened.”

“No way The Species instantly killed all of the planets!” shouted the ship’s copilot.

“Calling Kawpo,” said the Engineer as he fiddled with the ship’s communications device. No response. “Calling Dagnard… Calling Jslan… Calling Erdwa… Calling Kerbin…”

“My God,” said Evelina.

“This is the Union Transport Ship TRS Logius, transmitting on all channels. If you are there, and are able, please respond.”

We waited.

In the end, we picked up several responses, but only from the other ships who had just escaped the Galactic Council Chamber and were in a similar predicament.

“What… What happened?” asked Galactus.

“Nothing good,” grunted Jebediah.

“Well, we have at least five to ten minutes until the legal FTL is ready,” announced the pilot. “We might be safe for now unless The Species decide to smite us… So we can catch our breath and try to figure things out. First off, you guys aren’t looking too good… Tsian?”

“I’ve told you multiple times, I am not a medical doctor, I have a doctorate in quantum material sciences from the Vya Scientific Instructoratorium. I faint at the slightest paper cut and have not so much as touched a stethoscope.”

“You’re one of the leading theorists on Illasticonian crystals, or whatever, you should be able to figure out how to put a bandage on.”

“Ethan…” said Jeb. I turned to face him. “What were you two doing there?”

“Well… That night we said we were kissing… We actually went to the orbital ring, got cloned, and stole a spaceship. We know all about Meros, in fact… Hey, hold on a second, where did it go?” I asked.

“Here,” said Evelina, as she held up the diary of The Last Merosian. “I knew you’d misplace it, so I took it myself.”

“Right. Jeb, you can have this.”

“You were there?”

“At the same time as you, and by the way, the whole Meros thing was not - “

“Let’s not get into that right now, I’m already emotionally exhausted enough.”

“So… Ok. And then we crash landed on Jslan, met Kareen here, and then they fixed us up, and we tried to get to the council meeting with the idea to do something unexpected, to mess up their plans, as that seemed fairly climactic, and Galactus helped us in… We made our way to the control room, and, well, uh…”

“Ethan, you… You maniac. You didn’t!” said Jeb.

“It was him, not me,” said Evelina.

“You’re not going to like this.”

“You tried to drop the station into the black hole, didn’t you?” I took a deep breath.

“Yes.” I braced myself for the inevitable onslaught from the four Galactic Representatives I had just attempted to kill.

“I’ll admit, I didn’t think of that,” Kareen said. “And I probably would have done the same. I near about killed myself trying to save Jslan… And now it’s gone. All hope.”

“I threw every Illasticonian crystal I had at that key…” recalled Jeb. “And when that failed I threw myself at it. And to no avail.”

“Wow, that key must really have some error protection, then,” mused Tsian, the scientist. “Withstanding that many crystals… Even from afar…”

“So you did try to destroy the station… But it didn’t work… Although you did get The Species to attack, somehow,” said Jeb. “So how many guards did you have to kill to get to the control panel?”

“Well, actually, we fell through the ceiling and then the guy in charge said “Get back to work!” and pointed us towards a panel,” responded Evelina.

“What? No way Resik’nan would do that!” said Xanth.

“Who is Resik’nan?” Evelina asked.

“The guy who was in charge!” Jeb said.

“Look, I never saw any Resik’nan. In the big seat in the middle of the room, there was this old frail guy named Lad up there, he was in charge,” I said.

“There are no chief controllers matching that description,” reported Xanth.

“Okay, so this is going to sound crazy, but when that room got blown up, I got sucked out into space, he literally flew up to me, grabbed me, and dragged Evelina and I straight through a wall, like, we phased right through it, and then he popped an orange Illasticonian crystal and vanished!”

“Ok, so it had to be a lot of people you killed for you to make up something that ridiculous,” said the pilot.

“No, I’m not joking!”

“You can’t just fly around a black hole like Superman!” said Jeb.

“As the resident expert on Illasticonian Crystals, I can confirm that they do not come in orange,” said Tsian.

“So without proof, we can conclude you are lying, you are a human after all,” said the pilot.

“Hey!” snapped Evelina.

“I have proof, though… I think.” Everyone looked at me as I pulled out the letter, now slightly burnt. “He gave me this. It is for Galactus.” I looked at Galactus, and his eyes widened. He gently took the envelope from my outstretched hand and carefully opened it up. A dull black rock fell out as Galactus pulled out several sheets of a paper-like substance. We all watched with bated breath. He read it and then looked at me with shock and awe.

“You met the Great Wizard Ladstini?”

“That was him?”

“Dear Galactus The Cow, you may find these useful. Sincerely, The Great Wizard Ladstini.”

“That’s it?”

“The rest is gibberish! I have been trying to contact him for centuries, if not millennia, and he apparently only thought I was deserving of two sentences, a small rock, and eight pages of gibberish!”

“Who is he again?” I asked.

“A scientist turned wizard. He is said to have created the giant mushroom on planet Mycelium, among other epic feats, and has conducted extensive research on the Magic Boulder, which is, of course, why I have been trying to find him! With how far ahead he is of everyone else, and at the rate he was progressing, he’s doubtless practically a demigod by now!”

“Yeah, likely story, Galactus,” snorted the ship’s engineer. “We’ve all read your little comic books with all your fantastical stories.”

“Oi! I know what I saw!”

“Guys, chill,” Evelina said. “Galactus, can we see the gibberish?” The letter was passed around, and nobody could make heads or tails of it, that was, until, we put it in front of Tsian. His eyes widened.

“Tsian? Are you okay?” asked the pilot.

“By Crail,” Tsian whispered.

“What is it?”

“One of the holy grails of my field… The Anticonian Transposition Equation.”

“The what now?”

“It was merely theoretical, but I see… And it is so… so… beautiful.”

“Yes, but what does it do?”

“So if we detonate an Illasticonian crystal, it teleports a local amount of matter to a random location, with the particles spread out at a random distribution around that random location, depending on the quality of the crystal itself… But we’ve long suspected the existence of so-called Anticonian crystals, that can essentially reverse the process, teleporting some amount of matter with a particular distribution from a random point to a set point.”

“So, a recall device?” I asked.

“Precisely. And it has long been suspected that the way in which the crystal is detonated determines that location. The equations for normal Illasticonian crystals are far too difficult to derive in a reasonable amount of time, but those for theoretical Anticonian crystals are thought to be much simpler.”

“In theory?”

“Well, now? In reality. With this equation I can calculate exactly how to detonate an Anticonian crystal to target any point in space for retrieval based on the size of the crystal… But the quality component appears to be missing.”

“So, assuming you had an Anticonian crystal, you could manipulate it in a way as to teleport an object from any point in space to the location of the crystal?”

“Precisely! While this is groundbreaking, it is also completely useless without an Anticonian crystal! And the only problem is, as everyone knows, Anticonian crystals do not exist!”

“No, it is not useless!” declared Galactus The Cow. “Don’t you see? This is irrefutable evidence that I’m not crazy!”

“It could be a trick by The Species,” said Xanth.

“True,” said Jeb, “But it is worth looking into.”

“Wait a second…” I knelt down and picked up the dull black rock that had fallen out of the envelope. I gently held it between my right index finger and thumb, holding it up to one of the lights on the ship. It was about two inches long and had a slight shimmer to it. “Doctor Tsian… Say that, hypothetically, Anticonian Crystals did exist. What would they look like?”

“Nonsense, Ethan, that is much to large to be one.”

“Humor me. How could you tell if it was one?”

“I’d need a diquantum scanner at minimum.”

“Here,” said Xanth, handing over his triquantum scanner.

“You are getting worked up over nothing!” said Tsian. “It’s a rock! Illasticonian crystals of all sorts are scarcely bigger than the tip of a pen!” Nonetheless he scanned it.

“Well?” I asked.

“...It appears I have much to learn.”

“Wait, that… That’s an Anticonian crystal?” asked Jebediah.

“Not only that… Its structure appears to be perfect. I cannot find a single imperfection anywhere.”

“And that equation without the quality component… Will it work on crystals of perfect quality?” Xanth inquired.

“I have only just laid eyes on this equation, but… I have no reason to doubt that. Excuse me, I must lie down.”

“Wait, one more thing,” said Galactus. “There’s a back side.” Tsian turned the last page over.

“What are those?” asked the copilot.

“Spacetime Coordinates.”

“It could be the directions to his research on the Magic Boulder!” shouted Galactus. “I’ve been trying to find it forever! With all of the information he has collected, I may be able to see planet Pock once more!”

“Where exactly do the coordinates point?” asked Kareen.

“To a location approximately half of an observable universe away, about that way, in about four hours and fifty seven minutes.” Tsian pointed in a random direction towards one side of the spaceship.

“Well I think it is simple!” Galactus proclaimed. “You, Tsian, run the equations for that crystal at that point in spacetime. In five hours, we recover whatever, or whoever is on the other end.”

“Hold on, we only just found this. It could be a trap,” cautioned Jeb.

“Wait, hold on,” Tsian said. “Ethan… You said that Ladstini had an orange Illasticonian crystal?”

“He sure did!”

“So there’s a third type! Nobody, not even the craziest of the crazy, has even theorized that there could be a third type of Illasticonian crystal! Don’t you see how groundbreaking this is?!?!? If only the laboratories on Zeitri had not been destroyed, this could usher in the seventeenth great scientific era! But... Who am I? What am I, but useless!” he cried. "All my life's work... And it was all ignorantly incorrect! Oh, how very blind I was, but now, for the first time in my life, I can see!"

"Not now, Tsian!" urged the copilot. "Not in front of three representatives!"

“Uh, guys… Good news, bad news,” reported the engineer.

“What?” asked Jeb.

“Which one do you want first?”

“The good news.”

“Another ship that escaped the council chamber and is equipped with a diquantum telescope has reported that Kerbin is indeed surrounded by that shield thingy.”

“Yes!” shouted Jeb.

“But… We didn’t destroy the key!” I said.

“We didn’t?”

“They teleported away with it! They can probably lower the shield at any point!”

“The bad news… Well…”

“Just spit it out!”

“Representative Jebediah… When we were inside the black hole… Something went wonky with time.”

“What do you mean wonky?”

“Based on the positions of the stars… From the point of view of an external observer… When we were inside the black hole… There is no good way to sugarcoat this. Months have passed.”

“Months?!?!?!?”

“Good lord,” gasped Xanth. “So… The planets that aren’t responding… No… It can’t be.”

“Jslan… I tried… So hard…” cried Kareen.

My heart sank, as I knew what he was going to say next before he opened up his mouth.

“The Galaxy has fallen. The Species has taken over every single planet except Kerbin. There’s nobody left. I’m sorry.”

“Well… There’s us! We’re left!” cried Evelina in desperation.

“Not for much longer,” reported the engineer. “The ships I was talking about, the ones that escaped like we did… Their signatures are dropping off one by one. At this rate, they will all be gone in five minutes or less. Say your prayers. We are witnessing the end of the Galactic Union.”

 

 

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